Select committees on Mines and Minerals Amendment Bill and Coal Mines Bill recommended their approval without any change
Moody's Ratings on Tuesday said India's growing water shortage can disrupt farm and industry sectors and is detrimental to the credit health of the sovereign as rising food inflation and decline in income may spark social unrest. It said decreases in water supply can disrupt agricultural production and industrial operations, resulting in inflation in food prices and hence can be detrimental to credit health of sectors that heavily consume water, such as coal power generators and steel-makers.
Forest and tribal rights activist Alok Shukla will on Friday receive the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize -- 2024 for successfully leading a community campaign that saved 4.45 lakh acres of biodiversity-rich forests from 21 planned coal mines in Chhattisgarh.
The government on Thursday said it has cancelled the auction of Tamil Nadu's Nayakkarpatti tungsten mineral block which is near the Arittapatti Biodiversity site and a number of cultural heritage sites. Tungsten is a critical and strategic mineral.
A casual worker employed at the Defence Ministry was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly providing forged identity card to a key accused in petroleum ministry leaks case while police maintained that no sensitive documents were leaked or stolen from the defence ministry.
With a spate of clearances, including relief to companies facing delays in development of coal mines, the government is getting its act together.
At around 3 pm on Wednesday, India's daily peak power demand touched 220 gigawatts (Gw)-the highest daily peak ever in the history of the country. The ministry of power in its estimates had projected country's power demand to cross touch 220 Gw during the months of April-June. With a cooler April due to unseasonal rains, the peak shifted to May.
After extricating five bodies from an abandoned coal mine in Jharkhand's Dhanbad district, government authorities and the Eastern Coalfields limited Wednesday called off the rescue operation, while locals and leaders of political parties claimed more people were still trapped under the debris.
The government has fixed an indicative value for Delhi's iconic 'The Ashok' hotel at Rs 7,409 crore under the national monetisation programme, according to sources. The Ashok and the adjacent hotel Samrat are among the eight India Tourism Development Corp assets listed under the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman last year. The sources said investor consultation has already been undertaken and a cabinet note for the sale of the sprawling 25-acre property in the heart of the national capital is under consideration.
In June last year, India unveiled its first list of 29 critical minerals open for private sector exploration and mining. Since then, 38 critical mineral blocks have been auctioned, but only 14 - less than 37 per cent - have found bidders. This modest achievement was secured only after the Centre conducted a second round of auctions when the first round fell flat, failing to attract the minimum required bidders.
If the power plants are reporting low coal stocks with them, it is largely because they have improved their power generation to meet higher demand.
Earlier this year, the Union Cabinet gave the management of state-run companies the freedom to decide on divesting their subsidiaries. However, the very next day a meeting was held at the top level of the Government of India, for the presentation of proposals for more autonomy for state-run companies. Interestingly, no chiefs of any of these companies were invited. It is a problem that will stare the government in the face with the state-owned banks too, as talks have again begun for inviting strategic investments in these companies.
Samariya, the first Dalit to have been appointed to the post, was working as information commissioner in the transparency panel Central Information Commission (CIC). A 1985-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of Telangana cadre, Samariya retired after serving as the labour and employment secretary in the Government of India. He was sworn in as the information commissioner on November 7, 2020.
Adani Power, part of the Adani group, plans to add close to 6 gigawatts (Gw) of new power assets in the next five years, according to an investor presentation by the company. That is clearly meant to ride on India's burgeoning power demand. But there is another side to it: All of this new capacity is expected to be thermal power, or power produced from coal.
The shift to gross calorific value-based grading of coal aligned domestic prices with international benchmarks.
The fact that the government has no specific deadline to impose this policy was revealed through a response to an RTI application in February 2017.
What stood out in his 15-year journey as a member of the political executive at the Centre was his glowing record as India's most successful and effective finance minister. Both as prime minister and finance minister, he understood the importance of gradualism, except when the economy or the polity was in a crisis.
Maiki South Mining Pvt Ltd has bagged the country's first lithium block in Chhattisgarh that was put up for sale, the government said on Monday. Meanwhile, the government cancelled the auction of 14 critical minerals that were on offer in the second round of auction. The Katghora lithium and rare earth elements (REE) block in Chhattisgarh was awarded to the company at an auction premium of 76.05 per cent.
'At present, hybrids emit lesser carbon despite using fuel than pure play electric cars.' 'That is because EVs have to be charged and 76 per cent of the country's electricity is still coal-based and not renewables.'
Indian and Canada are looking at exploring more opportunities in the mining sector.
To tackle increasing demand, the Union Ministry of Power has urged central and state public-sector power-generating companies (gencos) and state power and energy departments to pick projects that are undergoing insolvency proceedings. The power ministry is looking at a quicker turnaround of these stressed power plants and enhancing power supply. Increasing demand is pushing states to scout for more power sources. "It is requested that state-owned gencos may be encouraged to participate in the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP) of stressed power assets, which are of strategic and commercial significance to the capacity addition plans of the states concerned.
Bids for eight coal blocks were sent for re-examination.
Because of his proximity to Indira Gandhi, he was able to intervene directly at the level of the PMO, which he did in the days leading up to the partition of Pakistan in 1971 when he transferred crucial information about Pakistan's moves via information handed to him by an East Pakistani diplomat in Poland where he was posted.
An inquiry has been ordered by the Director General of Mines Safety and a high-level committee of experts has been constituted by Coal India to investigate the causes of the accident.
Coal India would open 60 new mines soon, the minister said.
Transparency is more than welcome, but govt should not look vindictive.
A greater payment security mechanism for power generation companies to ensure timely payouts for supply of electricity will be in focus in 2022 as stricter rules are on the anvil for 24x7 power supply amid discoms' outstanding dues at a whopping Rs 1.56 lakh crore. Mounting outstanding dues of distribution companies (discoms) to electricity generation companies (gencos) have been a perennial issue affecting the entire value chain in the power sector and are also a hindrance for the ambitious goal of 24x7 power supply across the country even when the payment for coal is made in advance. The situation persists despite the fact that discoms' dues become overdue after 45 days of generating bills and they also have to pay penal interest on the overdue amount in most of the cases to gencos.
Reliance Industries has regained the top slot among Indian energy companies on the Platts global list
P Chidambaram says all options are on the table.
Eight of the 30 companies in the BSE Sensex that shared data reported 99 fatalities in 2016-17 against 86 in the previous year. These lives were lost due to industrial accidents at manufacturing facilities. Fatalities owing to road accidents were excluded from the count.
Dual methodology for e-auction to introduce price ceiling for power sector
The maiden, critical mineral auction in India has failed to enthuse the mining industry, with the first tranche achieving less than a 50 per cent success rate and the auction of several mines was cancelled owing to low response. The results, announced by the Ministry of Mines on Monday, showed that six lesser-known companies emerged as preferred bidders. Among these were Agrasen Sponge, Kundan Gold Mines, Dalmia Bharat Refractories, Sagar Stone Industries, and Maiki South Mining.
China on Tuesday announced a major policy change for its crisis-ridden power sector by allowing coal-fired power plants to charge their industrial and commercial customers market-driven prices. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) of China said the electricity generated by coal-fired plants would discover price in market trading "in an orderly manner" from October 15. This is being done to pass on the high costs of coal and is being held up as the boldest reform in the Chinese power sector.
The government is likely to take a call on the much-talked about divestment in Hindustan Copper next week.
The Union Government on Thursday said that 5.9 million tonnes of lithium reserves have been found for the first time in the country in Jammu and Kashmir. Lithium is a non-ferrous metal and is one of the key components in EV batteries. "Geological Survey of India for the first time established Lithium inferred resources (G3) of 5.9 million tonnes in the Salal-Haimana area of the Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir," the ministry of mines said on Thursday.
Parliament has cleared the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2023, recently. The objective of the Act is to invite investments from the private sector, including foreign companies, for mining minerals such as lithium and other critical minerals. Other than lithium, some of these minerals were classified as atomic minerals, including beryl and beryllium, niobium, titanium, tantalum and zirconium.
The strong message from the prime minister is of continuity of policies he considers right with strong emphasis on execution, points out T N C Rajagopalan.
Government is expected to rely more on divestment proceeds to keep the fiscal deficit in check
Amid strong opposition from CIL workers union to the proposed stake sale in the company, Finance Minister P Chidambaram has said the disinvestment proceeds of about Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion) from the coal behemoth will be invested in public sector banks.
The company signed a JV agreement with Coal India to set up 5000 Mw of solar and thermal projects. These projects are expected to commence between 2023 and 2027.
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