Ambanis, Adanis, Birlas and others in race for 2 mines tmrrw

In the maiden auction for coal blocks, the government will tomorrow invite bids for two mines on the first day and those in the race include biggies like Ambanis, Adanis and Birlas.
After clearing the technical bidding stage, entities from Reliance, Adani, Essar, GMR, Vedanta and Aditya Birla groups are eligible for the bidding beginning tomorrow for these blocks -- one in Odisha and the other one in Madhya Pradesh.
The Supreme Court had in September last year cancelled the allocation of 204 mines.
The two blocks which will be put on offer tomorrow are Talabira-I mine in Odisha for power sector and Sial Ghoghri mine in M for non-power sector. The auction would begin at 1100 hrs and end at 1300 hrs, sources said.

The five bidders which have been, yesterday technically qualified for the Talabira mine are Adani Power, Essar Power M P Ltd, GMR Chhattisgarh Energy Ltd, OPG Power Generation Pvt Ltd and Sesa Sterlite Ltd.
For Sial Ghoghri mine, the three firms which will be participating in the auction after being technically qualified are Hindustan Zinc, OCL Iron & Steel Ltd and Reliance Cement Company Pvt Ltd.

Under the schedule II (producing mines) category, the auction of 21 coal blocks, which begin tomorrow, will take place till February 22 and the vesting orders will be issued by March 23.
Around 134 bidders had yesterday cleared the initial stages of coal auction for 21 blocks put up by the government.

Hindalco, Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL), Bharat Aluminium Co Ltd (Balco), GMR Chhattisgarh Energy Ltd, GVK Power, JSW Energy, Ambuja Cement, Hindustan Zinc are some of the other major companies whose bids have been found technically qualified.
"Out of the 176 applications we received, 134 are found to be technically valid," Coal Secretary Anil Swarup had earlier said.
The auction follows the Supreme Court decision last year to cancel allocation of 204 coal mines.
The government had initially planned to auction 23 mines in first lot but has put on hold bidding for two mines due to litigations.
Swarup had said the Ministry will go ahead with the auction of mines as per schedule though there have some court cases as a consequence of which there have been some changes.

He had said that in case of schedule III mines (ready to produce) there are three mines that have been taken out of auction process consequent to the order of the Delhi High Court.