Indian Coal Allocation Scam I Detail Case Study
Coal Block Allocation Scam
India
is the second largest coal producer in the world, and it employs almost 5 lakhs
of Coal Miners. Coal is a major source of revenue for state as well as central
governments. So, coal block allotment plays a crucial role because the entire
revenue depends on it. The government decided to allocate the blocks which were
not the part of Coal India Limited or its subsidiaries to meet the demand of
coal and for additional revenue. During the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
government (2004-2009), coal blocks were allocated without proper bidding and
even to the firms which were not eligible for it.
Indian Coal Allocation Scam I Detail Case Study
Many
of the public sector entities and private companies were benefitted by the
unfair allocation of the coal blocks and government faced loss of about 1.86
lakh crore just by private companies and if the public sector entities were
included then loss would have crossed 10 lakh crores. This matter came into limelight
in March 2012 when Comptroller and Auditor General of India accused then
central government (UPA) of illegal or unfair coal block allotment.
Government
needed to auction 194 coal blocks between 2004 and 2011, but then government
decide not to auction coal blocks by competitive bidding, and they allocated
the coal blocks without proper bidding and allocating that blocks to private
entities who were not even eligible because of their political reference. As
soon the draft of CAG was leaked into the media, opposition started to target
then prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on corruption and to make the matter
worst already the government was facing charges of corruption for 2G spectrum
allocation scam.
Opposition
approached Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) led by Prakash Javadekar and
Hansraj Ahir. Due to continuous pressure from opposition CVC, directed CBI to
investigate the matter. Then CBI begin to investigate the matter and within few
months it registered over 40 FIR. A standing committee was also formed to investigate
the matter and their report suggested that all the coal blocks allocated
between 1993-2008 were done without proper bidding and guidelines.
As
soon as this report came out the opposition who were earlier targeting the
government also came into the radar because government led by BJP also ruled
between that period. So due to conflicts of interest Supreme Court directed CBI
to directly report the matter to court itself. Dr. Manmohan Singh defended
himself by saying that state government of West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand
etc. objected the method of competitive bidding because it will increase the
cost of coal which will affect the industries in the area.
On 24thSeptember 2014, Supreme
Court decided to cancel 214 coal blocks out of 218 coal blocks which were
allocated since 1993. Supreme Court even imposed penalty of Rs 295 for every
tons of coal which were extracted from that mine. Many big names of UPA
government were alleged by CBI in this case. SubodhKant Sahay who was tourism
minister faced allegations because his brother was director of SKS Ispat.
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Naveen
Jindal who was congress MP was allocated coal blocks with reserves of 1500
million metric tons of coals. He and Dasari Narayan Rao (Minister of Coals for
State) were booked by CBI in June 2013 for alleged cheating and criminal
misconduct. Many cases have been closed due to lack of evidence.
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