Bhubaneswar: The Coal Ministry has received 35 offline bids for 18 coal blocks, including five in Odisha, under the 7th round of commercial coal mines auction.
According to sources, seven bids have been received for partially-explored Badibahal, Kundanali Lubri, Machhakata (revised), Sakhigopal B Kakurhi and Meenakshi West of Odisha. The first four blocks have received a single bid while Meenakshi West has got three.
The seventh round of commercial auction was launched by the Ministry on March 29 this year for 103 coal mines and among them, 32 are new mines while 69 blocks are being rolled over from earlier tranches. Besides Odisha, the blocks are spread across Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Bihar.
The last date for submission of bids was was June 27. As part of the auction process, technical bids comprising online and offline bid documents were opened on June 28 (Wednesday).
The bids will be evaluated by a multi-disciplinary technical committee and qualified bidders will be shortlisted for participation in the electronic auction, to be conducted on MSTC portal shortly, it added.
