KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) - The Indian government will launch the second round of coal-block auctions in April, but has yet to announce the number of blocks that would be put up for bid.

Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal said that the new round of auctions would fall within the 204 blocks allocated to the process, derived from mining licences previously cancelled by the Supreme Court.

Goyal, however, declined to divulge the number of blocks to be put up for auction, but indications available from officials in the Ministry hinted that the government would be looking at putting about 20 blocks up for bids.

The government also refrained from commenting on the cancellation of three coal blocks awarded to Jindal Steel & Power Limited (JSPL) through successful bids during the first auction round, and and subsequent plans to hand over these blocks to Coal India Limited (CIL).

In response to a legal challenge by JSPL, the Delhi High Court on Tuesday stayed the cancellation of the coal blocks, directing the government to maintain the status quo on the award of the coal blocks and not to allocate them to CIL until the legal challenge was heard by the court.

The government cancelled four coal blocks which had been awarded after successful bids by investors - three by JSPL and one by aluminium producer Balco Limited. While the government ruled out the possibility of cartelisation in the bidding process, the Coal Ministry maintained these bids were ‘outliers’ in the sense that bids put in for these blocks were much lower than successful bids submitted in the case of other coal blocks and revenue accruals to the government had been lower than expected.

In the first round 33 coal blocks were put up for auction of which the award of five had been cancelled.

Despite the legal hangover from the first auction round, the government was keen to maintain the speed at which coal blocks had been allocated with the goal of completing the auction of all 204 coal blocks within the 2015 to 2016 fiscal, an official said.