SCCL to bid for cancelled coal blocks

Khammam: The officials of Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) are busy preparing tenders to secure coal blocks which were cancelled by the Supreme Court earlier.

Though the Centre’s ordinance on e-auction of coal blocks allows the companies that had bagged the mines under the earlier discretionary allocation system to bid afresh with a condition, the SCCL is predicting that many of these companies may go back from the contract due to various problems. The new ordinance issued by the NDA government on coal block e-auction paved a way to obtain coal blocks by SCCL on its own.

According to the Centre’s ordinance, any government company which had not formed a joint venture with a private party shall be allotted a mine if it has been allotted a power project on the basis of competitive bidding for the tariff.

An SCCL official said that the state government would adopt a two-pronged strategy to get the coal blocks. “The state government will either send proposals to the Centre and request it to sanction the coal blocks to it or the SCCL would take part in e-auction of coal blocks directly,” he said, adding they have confidence that they can secure coal in either of the way.

The Supreme Court cancelled coal mining in 214 of the total 218 coal blocks and the companies which lost their contracts, in case of gaining the bid, can mine it only if they pay an additional levy of '295 a tonne as directed by the court. The SCCL eyed coal blocks located in Maharashtra, Chhattis-garh and Jharkhand because of their proximity to Telangana. The company, which has been producing nearly 61 million tonne of coal a year, has enough  supply agreements till 2016.