The Coal Ministry has asked the chief secretaries of states such as Bihar, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Haryana and Chhattisgarh to appoint a nodal officer from the concerned government departments to evaluate mines to be allotted to PSU firms.
The development follows the Coal Ministry stating earlier this month that it will begin allocating 17 coal blocks to public sector firms by the end of next month.
In a letter to various state chief secretaries, the ministry said, “A nodal officer from the concerned government department may be nominated and in this regard the intimation may be sent to the ministry.”
The ministry had in January requested the states to nominate a nodal officer of senior level, “with regard to evaluation/examination work of identification/allocation of coal blocks.”
“However, the state government nominated executives engineers from the respective state power generation company and not from the concerned government department.”
The government had last year put on offer 14 coal blocks for power sector and three for mining firms. Initiating the process of allocation of coal mines. It had in December invited proposals from PSUs for allotting 17 blocks to them mostly for captive power plants.