Round 10 of commercial coal block auctions launched, 67 mines on offer

New Delhi: The coal ministry on Friday launched the 10th tranche of commercial coal block auctions with 67 coal mines on offer. The mines are spread across the states of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, West Bengal and Telangana.

They include both fully explored and partially explored and 3 coking coal mines. The ministry said it has made reforms to ensure rapid growth in the coal sector. For the current tranche also, mines falling under protected areas, wildlife sanctuaries, critical habitats, having forest cover greater than 40%, heavily built-up area, etc. have been excluded, the ministry said.

The block boundaries of some of the coal mines where there was presence of dense habitation, high green cover or critical infrastructure, and others, have been revised to improve the attractiveness of the coal mines, it added.


So far, nine rounds of commercial coal auctions have taken place since 2020 and 107 coal blocks have been auctioned with 256 million tonnes peak rated capacity.

The ministry has developed a coal block portal on PM Gatishakti National Master Plan, to facilitate visibility of geographical features for bidders.

Captive and commercial mines produced 147 million tonnes of coal in FY24, an increase of nearly 48%, reported by ET earlier. A senior government official had earlier said production from captive and commercial mines will likely breach 170 million tonnes this fiscal. Coal production target for FY30 has been set at around 1.5 billion tonnes, as per the ministry.