MUMBAI: The Supreme Court has directed the Government of India to scrap all captive coal block allocations made since 1993. In observance of the same the Government of India (GOI) has come out an ordinance clearly outlining its position on competitive bidding of coal blocks and has marked coal blocks to be auctioned under different schedules (Schedule I to Schedule III). The Government plans to put up 91 coal blocks under the first round of bidding which is likely to start before the end of 2014 or early 2015.

A total of 18,446 Million Tonnes (MT) of reserves, with an annual production capacity of 367 MT, is up for grabs. Through this auction, GOI intends to increase India's coal output to more than 1 Billion Tonnes per annum by 2019. Ministry of Coal is likely to notify the bidding process by the last week of December and the whole process is expected to be completed by March 2015.

Salient Features 

• A combination of primary and secondary research has been undertaken to collate and analyze data / information. The data is collected from authentic sources and government websites
• It is crosschecked and vetted by a pool of experts
• A specially designed filter will enable users to select evaluation criteria according to their preferences / requirements.
• The tool kit also offers advanced evaluation capabilities on seven critical parameters viz.,

      a) Geological Characteristics with Seam Details and Disturbances

      b) Mining Characteristics with Surface Constraints

      c) Coal Evacuation Infrastructure Status of Clearances and Land Acquisition Type and Percentage of Forest Cover Habitation Details like Villages, Families and Project Affected People State Attractiveness Index

• The tool also comes with a high degree of flexibility where in the users can custom design their risk perception based assignment of perceptive weights across each evaluation parameters.
• The tool is a culmination of Athena Info economics research on captive coal blocks and consistent efforts by a team of statisticians, economists, and Coal and power sector specialists.