Coal news and updates

Former coal miners want compensation law scrapped

Former owners of cancelled coal mines seeking compensation for their mining infrastructure asked the Delhi high court on Tuesday to strike down the legal provision on compensations.
They said the amount of compensation under Section 16 of the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Second Ordinance 2014 was not commensurate with the investment made by them, and asked the court to lay down the principles of compensation.
They also asked the court to set up an experts committee that could assess the compensation required to be paid to individual companies or prior allottees. They argued that compensation had to be paid on a case-by-case basis and not across the board.
The companies, led by GVK Steel (Goindwal Sahib) Ltd and GVK Power (Goindwal Sahib) Ltd, with Jayaswal Neco Industries Ltd, Jindal Power Ltd and Tata Power Ltd, claimed that the government had arbitrarily limited the date by which compensation had to be calculated, which violated constitutional provisions and the coal ordinance alike.
A bench of justice B.D. Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva, however, said that they could not lay down the principles of compensation, although they could assess whether the provision of law should be struck down.
The union government will respond to the contentions of the prior allottees on 23 April.
The Supreme Court last year struck down the allocation of more than 200 coal mines, ruling that the process of allotment was arbitrary and flawed.

source: http://www.livemint.com