Coal-Gate: All Coal Block Allocations Since 1993 Illegal, Supreme Crt

[timmy]

The Supreme Court today cancelled the allocation of all coal mining rights between 1993 and 2009 on the grounds that the process used to assign licenses lacked transparency. 

How the mining rights should be re-assigned will be decided by the top court in a series of hearings starting September 1.

The judges said that no guidelines were followed in handing out coal licences, and that 36 different committees acted arbitrarily and "public good suffered" as a result.

The allocation of coal licenses has been the subject of a CBI investigation that is being monitored by the Supreme Court since the state auditor said in 2012 that 1.83 lakh crores had been lost because coal rights were not auctioned.

That finding by the Comptroller and Auditor General forms the basis of the scandal dubbed "Coal-Gate" which singed the previous government headed by Dr Manmohan Singh, who held direct charge of the Coal Ministry for some of the years under investigation.

The PM ignored calls for his resignation over the alleged scam, which added to a retinue of financial scandals weighing down his government ahead of the national election in May.

The CBI has inquested the assignment of 195 coal blocks allocations since 1993. Of these, 39 were assigned to companies before Dr Singh's coalition government first took office in 2004 (it won a second term in 2009).

[timmy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ysg8blj8IA

[timmy]

Supreme Court cancelled coal blocks allotments from the year 1993 to 2010. The Court observed that there was no transparency in coal blocks allotments right from 1993. It also said that the court would decide the procedure of allotment of coal blocks. It observed that allotments were done unconstitutionally and said that more investigation should be done on this issue. It is already known that UPA government allotted coal blocks without auctioning and it turned out to a major controversy.