The Telegraph reported that West Bengal government has offered a coal block to local investor Shyam Sel Ltd after the company dragged the state to court on the grounds of lack of transparency in the allocation of mines.

The state government has agreed to give the Trans Damodar underground block to the company, which has signed an MoU with it to build a 1.1 million tonne steel plant and a 1000 MW power plant at Jamuria, Burdwan.

The block given to Shyam Sel with reserves of around 40 million tonnes is believed to be small compared with what Jai Balaji and JSW Steel have got. Incidentally, this block was kept for a high profile specialty steel maker from western India. Shyam Sel, which is still pursuing the court case, has neither accepted the offer nor rejected it.

According to the company, detailed exploration has to be carried out to establish the reserves and whether that meets Shyam’s long term need. The government has told the investor to accept the small block and withdraw the court case, with a promise of a bigger block when the Centre gives it.

The authorities had last offered coal mines in 2007 when local investor Jai Balaji Group and India’s largest private steel maker JSW Steel bagged five blocks among themselves. Since then a number of local and national players such as Kalyani Steel, Videocon, Vedanta and Shyam Steel have been waiting to get blocks the prime reason for these investors to come calling in Bengal. However, the Centre has not allocated any coal mine to Bengal since the end of 2007 and hence, the state cannot offer any to the industry.

(Sourced from www.telegraphindia.com)