Coal scam: Supreme Court to decide fate of 218 blocks today

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Sep 24, 2014: The Supreme Court will pronounce its verdict on the fate of 218 coal blocks, allocated illegally to various companies by successive governments at the Centre, on Wednesday afternoon.

In a landmark verdict last month, the apex court had said that licences for all the coal blocks issued by successive governments since 1994 were illegal and a transparent process for their bids was not followed.

"To sum up, the entire allocation of coal block as per recommendations made by the Screening Committee from July 14, 1993 in 36 meetings and the allocation through the government dispensation route suffers from the vice of arbitrariness and legal flaws. The Screening Committee has never been consistent, it has not been transparent, there is no proper application of mind, it has acted on no material in many cases, relevant factors have seldom been its guiding factors, there was no transparency and guidelines have seldom guided it," a bench headed by Chief Justice RM Lodha had said in its 163-page verdict.

The government has claimed that an investment of nearly Rs.2 lakh crore has already been made in those blocks. The Centre has asked the apex court not to cancel 46 coal blocks that have either started production or are close to it.

The allocation of nearly 218 coal blocks to various companies has been at the centre of what has come to be known as the Coalgate scandal, said to cost the exchequer Rs.1.86 lakh crore according to a 2012 audit report.

The CBI, which is investigating the multi-crore scam, has alleged that for several years, mining licences were given arbitrarily to private companies without a transparent bidding process.

The Congress faced a huge embarrassment during the UPA II regime with investigation into coal scam directly implicating the office of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who briefly held the coal portfolio.

Courtesy: Indiatoday