IMC to discuss upon coal bidder’s concern in its meeting on

With the government having initiated the process of auctioning coal blocks, bidders have raised concerns on several serious and trivial issues, including discrepancies in reserves in the biggest of the three mines put up for sale, number of participating companies that consortium can have and the color of ink on which copies need to initialed. These issues are likely to be taken up in an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC)’s meeting on Thursday. i.e. April 17, 2014. The ministers in this meeting would also deliberate on the issue whether bidders would be permitted to take sample of coal from Central Coalfields (CCL) to perform the yield analysis of Jhirki coal block. The issues that came to light at the pre-bidding meeting on April 4, included discrepancy in the coal reserves and area of the block given in the GR and the FRP of Jhirki & Jhirki (West) coal block. According to government estimates, Jhirki & Jhirki (West) of East Bokaro Coalfield has geological reserves of 267.91 MT coking coal for steel (blast furnace) and Tokisud-II of South Karanpura Coalfield with 127.692 MT of reserves for cement plant. Additionally, another issue that would be on agenda of this meeting is the clarity on whether the permitted EUP (end use plans) would remain unchanged throughout the life of the mine or not and whether the bidders would have a free hand to change the proportion of coal consumption for different EUPs of the bidder mentioned at the time of the bidding. The Centre in late February had began the auction process putting two mines in Jharkhand and one in West Bengal on block, having an estimated 500 million tonnes of reserves, for captive use of steel, cement and sponge iron firms. This was Centre’s first auction after its earlier practice was criticized by the Comptroller and Auditor (CAG) General for having caused notional loss of Rs 1.8 lakh crore to the exchequer.