Supreme Court to decide fate of 218 coal blocks on Wednesday

The fate of 218 coal blocks, which was allocated to companies illegally by the Centre, will be decided by the Supreme Court tomorrow.

The apex court will pronounce its verdict at 2 PM on blocks whose allocation was declared illegal by it and in which government claimed that Rs 2 lakh crore investments have been made.

The apex court on August 25 had held that all coal blocks allocations since 1993 by various regimes at theCentre have been made illegally and arbitrarily.

The apex court, which had used almost all terms to condemn the procedures adopted by 36 screening committee meetings since 1993, however, had stopped short of cancelling them saying, "what should be the consequences, is the issue which remains to be tackled."

The court, which examined the allocation of 218 blocks in pre-auction era till 2010, had held that they were done in an illegal manner by an "ad-hoc and casual" approach "without application of mind" and "Common good and public interest have, thus, suffered heavily" due to lack of fair and transparent procedure resulting in "unfair distribution" of the "national wealth" -- coal -- "which is king and paramount Lord of industry." "To sum up, the entire allocation of coal block as per recommendations made by the Screening Committee from July 14, 1993 in 36 meetings and the allocation through the government dispensation route suffers from the vice of arbitrariness and legal flaws.

"The Screening Committee has never been consistent, it has not been transparent, there is no proper application of mind, it has acted on no material in many cases, relevant factors have seldom been its guiding factors, there was no transparency and guidelines have seldom guided it," a bench headed by Chief Justice R M Lodha had said in its 163-page verdict.