Coal news and updates

Coal scam: Centre to cancel 41 coal block allocations, asks companies to respond

The government has said it may cancel 41 coal block allocations made between 1993 and 2009 but yet to take off. The companies that stand to lose their mining licence have been asked to clarify, the Centre today told the Supreme Court, which is hearing the case linked to the violations in the grant of mining licences without the bidding route, at a huge cost to the government.

Here are the latest developments in this story:

    In the status report, the CBI told the Supreme Court that it has completed its probe into six FIRs, or police complaints, linked to allocations made when the PM held charge of the Coal Ministry.

    16 FIRs have been filed so far in 'Coal-Gate', or the illegal allocation of coal mining blocks to private companies and those close to the Congress government.

    In several of those allocations, "no criminality has been found", the investigating agency has said in its status report, according to sources.

    But sources add that some of the key files from that period remain missing, a point on which the Opposition has alleged a cover-up at the highest level in the government.

    The CBI is investigating 195 coal block allocations between 1993 and 2009.

    The agency has alleged that for several years, the government gave away mining licences arbitrarily, without a transparent bidding process, at the cost of thousands of crores to the country.

    The Supreme Court had asked the CBI to probe all allotments made since 1993 and last week, it asked the Centre whether it can scrap some of these deals. The Centre is likely to inform the top court today whether it is willing to cancel these deals.

    The coal controversy has seen the Opposition repeatedly demanding the Prime Minister's resignation.

    Last week, the Attorney General, speaking on behalf of the Centre, admitted for the first time that "something had gone wrong" in coal allocations. "We take decisions in good faith but somehow it goes wrong," Goolam Vahanvati told the top court, saying that the decisions were driven by the need to increase power generation at the time.

    The BJP then said such an admission makes it incumbent upon the PM to volunteer himself for CBI questioning.

Source: NDTV