Coal news and updates

‘NTPC unlikely to be hit by SC ruling on captive blocks’

August 29: NTPC is unlikely to lose any of its captive coal blocks even if the Supreme Court cancels allotment of all captive coal blocks to various companies, the company’s Chairman and Managing Director Arup Roy Choudhury said in Kolkata on August 29.

“Based on an initial understanding of the recent Supreme Court ruling, we feel that NTPC is unlikely to get affected,” Choudhury told reporters, but added that the company has not yet critically examined the ruling of the court.

“In any case, everything will be clear on September 1 when the judgement is announced,” the CMD said.

He said NTPC was allotted coal blocks as per the recommendations of CERC and the cost of power generated from the coal to be received from its captive coal blocks was factored in while fixing the electricity rates to be sold to various consumers.

The SC on August 25 had declared that the process followed for allocation of captive coal blocks between 1993 and 2010 by the Union government was “illegal” as it lacked transparency and a proper guideline.

“All allocations were done in an illegal manner and it suffers from vice of arbitrariness,” said a Bench headed by Chief Justice R M Lodha which examined the allegations about alleged irregularities in the allocation of around 194 coal blocks by the previous governments.

The Court further said that a decision on re-allocation of mines will be announced on September 1, 2014 and that the decision on cancellation of blocks will be taken up on a case-by-case basis.

The SC verdict is in line with the observations of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which was engaged in the investigation into the Rs 1.86 lakh crore coal block allocation scam.