Balco, Jaiprakash Power, OCL Iron & Steel bag 1 mine each

Balco, Jaiprakash Power Ventures and OCL Iron & Steel bagged one mine each on the fourth day of coal auction today, taking the total number of blocks sold via bidding to 11.
Vedanta group company Balco quoted Rs 3,025, the highest bid, for Chotia block, Coal Secretary Anil Swarup tweeted late tonight.
Balco beat Godawari Power & Ispat Ltd, Hindalco Industries, Prakash Industries, Rungta Mines and Ultratech Cement for the mine in Chhattisgarh.
Earlier in the day, Jaiprakash bagged the Amelia (North) mine in Madhya Pradesh quoting Rs 712 per tonne, while OCL Iron & Steel won Ardhagram mine in West Bengal at Rs 2,302 per tonne.

"Ardhagram closes at Rs 2,302 (per tonne) with OCL Iron & Steel as the highest bidder," the Coal Secretary tweeted.
"Jaiprakash Power the highest bidder at (Rs) 712 (a tonne) for Amelia North."

The 10 companies in the race for Amelia (North) mine, apart from Jaiprakash, were Adani Power, Bharat Aluminium Co Ltd (BALCO), Essar Power M P Ltd, GMR Chhattisgarh Energy Ltd, GVK Power Goindwal Sahib Ltd, Jindal Power Ltd, JSW Energy Ltd, KSK Mahanadi Power Company, RattanIndia Power Ltd and Reliance Geothermal Power Pvt Ltd.
The mine has extractable reserves of 70.28 million tonne (MT).
Ardhagram and Chotia have extractable reserves of 19.29 MT and 13.57 MT respectively.

Earlier tweeting on auctions, Swarup said "coal block auction gets underway on the fourth day," adding that poor states will reap benefits of coal block auctions.
Besides OCL Iron & Steel, other companies in the race for Ardhagram coal mine included Easternrange Coal Mining Pvt Ltd, Monnet Ispat and Energy Ltd and Visa Steel Ltd.
Yesterday, Jai Prakash Associates, Durgapur Projects and B S Ispat had bagged one mine each, even as the government said that it expects more aggressive bidding for blocks as the mines were already producing.
In the first two days, five blocks were sold Relince Cement, GMR Chhattisgarh, Sunflag Iron, CESC and Hindalco had won the blocks.

After the Supreme Court cancelled allocation of 204 mines in September, the government decided to auction the blocks. It has put 19 blocks on sale in the first tranche. The last day for the auction of first lot of mine is February 22.