Govt to continue with coal block auctions

The government will continue the process of auctioning coal blocks after successfully putting 33 mines under the hammer earlier this year, a senior government official said on Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters in Mumbai, RN Choubey, special secretary of the ministry of power, said 18,000 to 19,000 megawatt (mw) of power projects in the country were still in need of coal.

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the government has changed a decades-long method of allocating mining licenses, launching a round of auctions to reduce risk of wrongdoing after a Supreme Court last August cancelled more than 200 illegal coal block awards made over two decades.

(Reuters)