The State Government has decided to put 20 iron ore and manganese mines, whose leases will expire on March 20, 2020, on a fresh auction process.
The Steel and Mines Department has directed the Director of Mines to initiate a fresh process for major mineral blocks, while issuing single Notice Inviting Tenders (NIT) for such auction on December 2, official sources said.
As per discussions held in the recent meetings of the Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) and the High Level Committee(HLC), the Government decided to annul the auction process initiated vide NITs dated October 4, 14 and 18 this year.
Accordingly, the bank guarantees furnished by the bidders in response to the annulled NITs would be returned to the participants in the tender process, said the sources.
They said that the time schedule for auction of aforesaid 20 blocks of expiring leases as finalised in consultation with the Transaction Advisor (TA) has been intimated to the Director Mines.
The fresh NIT would be issued on December 6 and the commencement of sale of tender papers will begin from that day also. The last date for sale of tender document is December 30, said sources.
According to latest time line, Letter of Intent to the successful bidder would be provided between February 10 and 29, 2020 by the State Government.
Notably, the Union Government has asked for expediting the auction process as all the major mines leases are ending on March 31, 2020.
The Union Steel Ministry has requested the State Government to speed up the process so that after getting the leases, the firms will be able to get statutory licenses in time.
The Ministry has intended so as it apprehends that there will be shortfall of 50 million tonnes of iron ore during this period, which will hit the steel sector badly.
Accordingly, the State Government has been urged to chalk out an action llan in this regard so that steel makers will not face the crunch of raw material as India is eyeing to produce 300 MT of crude steel by 2030.