New Delhi, March 26 (IANS) The coal ministry is identifying 15-20 blocks for the next - third - round of auction, but cannot give a deadline for completing the process for all 204 blocks whose allotments were annulled by the Supreme Court, Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday.
"Fifteen to 20 coal blocks are being identified (for auction) and we are hopeful that the mining from these blocks could start soon," Goyal told reporters here after launching the ministry's coal project monitoring portal.
"I don't think that a timeline can be set for all 204 (blocks) because several of them are unexplored and several of them were alloted earlier based on irrational criteria. I would like to do the whole job very systematically," he added.
The government earlier this month completed the auction of 33 coal mines in two rounds.
On Tuesday, as per the privisions of the coal ordinance now made into law by parliament, the government allotted 37 mines to central and state-run power units, and one to the Steel Authority of India Ltd.
In a statement later, the coal ministry said that the "e-CPMP (online coal project monitoring portal) has been developed for tracking projects that entail an investment related to coal" and will "improve the communication between industries to government, government to government, or vice versa".
Coal Secretary Anil Swarup said the portal "marks a new beginning in the process towards making everything transparent in coal, so that nothing gets leaked".
The Delhi High Court had on Monday granted interim relief to Jindal Steel and Power Ltd. and restrained the central government from allocating to Coal India the two coal blocks - for which JSPL had emerged as the successful bidder in the recent round of auctions.
The ministry said last week it was "re-examining" nine winning bids out of the 33 coal blocks auctioned so far, on whether there were any price discrepancies in case of the nine winning bids, including those made by companies like Jindal Steel and Balco.
It was considering whether these bids were too low when compared with the winning bids for other similar blocks through an analytical tool called "outlier", which looks for unusual observations that are far removed from the mass of data.
Rs.2 lakh to kin of train accident dead: Prabhu
New Delhi, March 20 (IANS) Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu on Friday said Rs.2 lakh compensation will be given to the next of kin of the 27 killed in the train derailment in Uttar Pradesh's Rae
Ease of Doing Business: Andhra, Gujarat, and Telangana top in terms of Ease of Doing Business, Finance Minister released a report
Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, and Telangana have managed to remain at the top of the list of seven best-performing states and union territories in terms of Ease of Doing Business. This ranking has been
PM Modi Visit: PM Modi to be honored with Lokmanya Tilak Award, Sharad-Ajit Pawar seen on the same stage
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on a visit to Pune city of Maharashtra today. Here he will lay the foundation stone of various development projects and will also be honored with the Lokmanya Tilak
KKR vs LSG : In the match between KKR and Lucknow, there will be a contest between Narine and Digvesh, eyes will be on Pant
The IPL 2025 match will be played between defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Lucknow Super Giants on Tuesday. There will be two matches in the IPL on Tuesday as the match to be played
Gyanvapi Masjid Controversy: After all, how can a mosque be named Gyanvapi?
The observations made by the Supreme Court in the Gyanvapi case have increased the chances of the case reaching its logical conclusion, as it agreed to a large extent with the stand of the Varanasi
Gurugram: As soon as I consumed mouth freshener in a restaurant, I started bleeding and vomiting; Five people admitted to hospital
Five people fell ill after consuming mouth freshener at La Foresta restaurant in Sector-90, Gurugram. Bleeding started coming out along with a burning sensation in the mouth. When the condition became
Ashwin: 'Dhoni is great, but Rohit is no less', Ashwin praised the Indian captain on the matter of a family emergency.
Ravichandran Ashwin played an important role in the Test series win against England. After the last Test in Dharamshala, when head coach Rahul Dravid was asked about the best moment of the series, he
Reality will present the world's fastest smartphone charging technology at MWC 2022, the charger can be of so many watts
Realme has confirmed that it will launch its high-end Realme GT 2 series of smartphones at MWC 2022 (Mobile World Congress 2022) later this month. Now, the Chinese smartphone maker has revealed that
Salaar Box Office Day 17: 'Salaar' resonated again at the box office, there was a boom in business on the weekend, and it earned so many crores.
Salaar Box Office Collection Day 17: Prabhas's Salaar is dominating the box office. On Sunday the film completed 17 days of release. With this, the business is now about to achieve a milestone.
Ram Nath Kovind: Former President Kovind will live in Ram Vilas Paswan's bungalow, this will be the new address
Draupadi Murmu has become the new President of the country. He also took oath on Monday. After this, the term of Ramnath Kovind was completed. Now his new address will not be Rashtrapati Bhavan, but