Cancelled coal mines allotted to Coal India

Even as JSPL on Monday moved the Delhi High Court against the government cancelling the company's winning bids on coal blocks, the coal ministry has allotted three of the cancelled blocks to Coal India Ltd.

A senior coal ministry official here told IANS that blocks Gare Palma IV/1, IV 2 and IV 3, for which JSPL and Balco had emerged as the highest bidders in the recent two rounds of auctions, have been allotted to Coal India.

The ministry said last week it was "re-examining" nine winning bids out of the 33 coal blocks auctioned so far, on whether there were any price discrepancies in case of the nine winning bids, including those made by companies like Jindal Steel and Balco.

The ministry was considering whether these bids were too low when compared with the winning bids for other similar blocks through an analytical tool called "outlier", which looks for unusual observations that are far removed from the mass of data.

JSPL (Jindal Steel and Power) told the court that the coal ministry cancelled the allocation on March 20 and it feared that blocks Gare Palma IV/2, IV/3 and Tara in Chhattisgarh might be allocated to someone else as the government was "moving very fast".

"Government takes decision on bids for nine coal blocks after examination. Bids for five blocks accepted. Bids for Gare Palma 4/1, 4/2, 4/3 and Tara coal blocks not accepted," Coal Secretary Anil Swarup tweeted.

He had told reporters last week that "the government can reauction the mines, it can allot the mines to the state and it can give the blocks to Coal India".

Business chambers have expressed concern at the government's move.

"Any instance of reversing the process or withholding an award will adversely impact the overall business sentiment," said A. Didar Singh, secretary general of industry chamber FICCI.

"At a time when the government has introduced legislation to open up coal mining as an industry, global mining companies intending to participate will need the assurance and comfort of a stable policy regime that will guarantee predictability of decision-making, certainty of investments as well as security of tenure," he added.

Industry chamber Assocham had on Friday termed the central government's decision as "unfair".