New Delhi: The next phase of auction of coal mines will begin shortly, government told the Lok Sabha Tuesday.
"In the first phase, the government had auctioned 19 coal mines. The second phase, under more mines would be put on the block, would begin shortly," Minister for Coal, Power and Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal said.
Speaking during a debate on Coal Mines (Special Provision) Bill, which seeks to convert an Ordinance into a Act, he said states are major beneficiary of these auctions.
Recalling the events leading to auction of coal mines, Goyal said the government had adopted a transparent method for allocating coal mines during which bids worth more than Rs 1 lakh crore were received.
"The government would not have been able to auction the mines without the Ordinance," he said, adding "during 2004-14 not a single mine was auctioned...We have completed auction of 19 mines."
He said the government acted with a sense of urgency to deal with the coal auction issue following a Supreme Court order and adopted the Ordinance route to put in place the requisite legislation.
Failure to act promptly, Goyal said, would have resulted in problems like frequent power cuts and slowdown in production of crucial inputs like steel and cement.
Referring to the performance of Coal India Limited (CIL), the Minister said the PSU has been able to increase output by 7 percent after June as against the historical record of only 1-2 percent.
Responding to a query with regard to selecting the mines for reverse auction, Goyal said the officials have followed a transparent process based on definied parameters.
Moreover, he added, the mines were selected after due consultation with senior officials of the concerned state.
Earlier, while opposing the Ordinance, BJD member B Mahtab said the states like Odisha got a raw deal in the auction as eight of the nine mines in the states were put up for reverse auction.
Odisha, he added, did not get even one percent of the money generatred through the auction of mines.
In the reverse bidding the end consumers benefit at the cost of state where the mine is located. Under this route, companies compete with one another to lower the bid amount and the one who promises to extract of coal at lowest cost gets the mine.
On the other hand, in regular auction process, the highest bidders gets the mine. In both the cases, the bid amount goes to the state.
Another BJD member Rabindra Kumar Jena said Odisha got around Rs 500 crore during the auction which had yielded a total of more than Rs 1 lakh crore.
The others who participated during the discussion include Ravindra Kumar Rai (BJP), Vincent Pala (Cong), A Arunmozhithevan (AIADMK), Arvind Ganpat Sawant (Shiv Sena),Murali Mohan Maganti (TDP), P S Reddy (YSRCP), Badaruddoza Khan (CPI-M) and Pashupati Nath Singh (BJP).
