(From left) External affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee with NIPM chairperson Santwana Chaudhuri and ONGC director (HR) A.K. Balyan in Calcutta on Saturday. A Telegraph picture

Calcutta, May 24: Coal India Ltd (CIL) will soon invite bids from both domestic and international players for its abandoned mines.

“Our board of directors has given its in-principle nod to extract coal from closed mines and we’ll float a global expression of interest for this within a month,” CIL chairman Partho S. Bhattacharyya said. He was here to attend the 38th annual general meeting of the National Institute of Personnel Management.

The CIL board took the decision to float a global bid after it received proposals from ArcelorMittal and the Ispat Group to develop abandoned mines for leftover reserves.

The Mittal proposal prompted the Coal India chairman to order a study of all the abandoned mines. The study will examine the reasons for abandoning these mines and the amount of coal left in these blocks. Coal India has also asked rating agency Crisil to suggest the best way to form such joint ventures.

“We have 121 abandoned mines. Of these we have identified 26 which can be redeveloped,” Bhattacharyya said.

Education outlay

External affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, who was also present at the meet, said the demand for skilled professionals to keep pace with the eight to nine per cent rate of economic growth posed a major challenge.

Mukherjee said an outlay of Rs 36,000crore had been earmarked for education in the Eleventh Plan. This is a little less than 6 per cent of GDP.

The minister also stressed on the need to boost enrollment for higher education in the country, which was only 10 per cent compared with 25 per cent in developed countries. “We need to step up this percentage to 15 per cent by 2011-12,” he said.