Govt puts 67 coal mines on the block in 10th round of auctions

New Delhi: The coal ministry on Friday launched the 10th round of coal mine auctions with an offer of 67 explored and partially explored mines.

The mines are spread across Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, West Bengal and Telangana, the ministry said. They include three coking coal mines.

Union minister of coal and mines G. Kishan Reddy launched the 10th tranche of auctions at Hyderabad.

Making India self-sufficient in coal

Addressing the gathering, Reddy said that all coal entrepreneurs should collaborate for the nation’s development and align with the vision of making India self-sufficient in coal.

The minister of state for coal and mines, Satish Chandra Dubey said the coal block allocatees would be given all the support by improving ease of doing business. He said suggestions and feedback are being taken from coal industry players for improving the attractiveness of coal sector.

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In his keynote address, Amrit Lal Meena, secretary, ministry of coal placed significant emphasis on enhancing coal production to meet the rising energy demands and underscored that the increase in production must not compromise the safety of workers, stressing the adoption of global best practices to ensure secure working environment.

The secretary further called for robust state-level support to streamline the ease of doing business within the coal sector.

107 coal blocks auctioned

Commercial coal block auctions were first started in 2020. Since then, in nine rounds, the ministry has auctioned 107 coal blocks with 256 million tonnes of peak rated capacity.

So far, 11 commercial coal blocks have been operationalized. In the last financial year 17.5 million tonnes of coal was produced from commercial blocks.

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For this financial year (FY25), the ministry has targeted 186.63 million tonnes (MT) of production from these captive and commercial coal mines. In January it said that plans were in place for production to be increased to 225.69 MT during FY26, with an eventual target of 383.56 MT by FY30.

These auctions are a key mode of asset monetization for the coal ministry.

On 1 April, Mint reported that coal ministry is targeting a monetization of assets worth about ₹54,721 crore in FY25, about 9% higher than ₹50,118 crore target in FY24.