The UPA government plans to take the battle to the BJP’s court over the issue of alleged scam in the coal sector.
The UPA government plans to take the battle to the BJP’s court over the issue of alleged scam in the coal sector.
A draft report by the comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) leaked to the media alleged that the coal ministry extended “undue benefits” to the tune of Rs 10.67 lakh crore to companies by not allocating coal blocks on the basis of auctioning.
“We are preparing a list of coal blocks that have been auctioned during the NDA tenure. The first come first get policy has been there since 1993. We will take up the issue in Parliament,” said an official in the coal ministry.
“Before the UPA government came to power, 40 coal blocks had been auctioned,” the official added.
Interestingly, from 2004-2009, (the period for which CAG conducted its study) there have been five changes at the helm of the coal ministry. While Jharkhand Mukti Morcha president Shibu Soren has been coal minister twice, Dr Dasari Narayan Rao and Santosh Bargodia have also been ministers of state for coal in 2004 and 2008 respectively. Sri Prakash Jaiswal took over the reign of the ministry in 2009.
Jaiswal said, “Till 2009 we did not auction the coal blocks because the government wanted to keep the power tariffs low. Auctioning would have made the power tariffs very high. In 2009 when it was brought to our notice that there was a need for auctioning of coal blocks to private sector companies, we have not auctioned a single blocks since then. And only after passing the law of competitive bidding we will start allocation of the new coal blocks”
Between 2004 and 2009 the government allocated 208 coal blocks to different companies, of which eight allocations have been cancelled.
In the meantime, the CAG itself came to the rescue of the coal ministry by writing to the prime minister saying, “In the extant case the details being brought out were observations which are under discussion at a very preliminary stage and do not even constitute our pre-final draft and hence are exceedingly misleading…
Pursuant to clarification provided by the ministry in exit conferences held on 9.02.2012 and 9.03.2012, we have changed our thinking … In fact it is not even our case that the unintended benefit to the allottee is an equivalent loss to the exchequer. The leak of the initial draft causes great embarrassment as the Audit Report is still under preparation.”
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