Coal scam: War of words in SC; UPA stares at 2G-like situation

Indications are the Supreme Court is preparing another thunder bolt for the United Progressive Alliance - this time on the issue of coal blocks allocation.

According to a report in The Economic Times today, the apex court has threatened to cancel all coal block allocations if it finds they were done “without following proper procedures”.

[caption id=“attachment_658884” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] “Don’t crib. In a democracy such things happen,” the judge reportedly said. Reuters[/caption]

This would mean, the UPA is likely to face an embarrassing situation just like in the 2G spectrum case, where the court cancelled around 120 telecom licences.

More than the threat, it is the language used by Justice RM Lodha which is more damning for the government.

“The implementation shows that the Ministry of Coal forwarded all applications to the authorities without any scrutiny. There is no system in place to verify facts claimed by companies about their track-record, finances etc. It appears some companies got coal blocks by making misrepresentations,” the newspaper quoted the judge as saying.

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He termed the implementation of the allocation “irrational, arbitrary”.

According to the ET report, there was some heated arguments between Justice Lodha and Attorney General G E Vahanvati.

Vahanvati lost his cool and even ranted in the courtroom that the government’s policies are being frequently challenged in the court, to which Lodha retorted for that the government’s policy has to be rock solid.

“Don’t crib. In a democracy such things happen,” the judge reportedly said.

Further, when Vahanvati said screening committees had followed their norms, the Judge asked whether these guidelines were applied uniformly or “was it horses for courses”. Justice Lodha also asked why it took so long to introduce competitive bidding in the coal block allocation.

According to a BusinessLine report, the Central Bureau of Investigation has filed a status report in the Supreme Court, in which it said the government made coal block allocations without “verifying the credentials of companies which allegedly misrepresented facts about themselves.”

The three-judge bench headed by Justice RM Lodha, which went through the report filed in a sealed cover, said the report prima facie alleges irregularities, the PTI reported.

However, according to the report, Vahanvati hit back saying, “CBI is not the final word on this.”

The court also asked the CBI Director, Ranjit Sinha, to file an affidavit that the status report submitted by the agency on March 8 was “vetted by him and not shared with political executives” and the same will be followed in future.

The Supreme Court bench directed the Government to explain why a small group of companies have been “picked and chosen” for allocation of coal blocks out of the large number of companies that applied for it, the PTI report said.

On January 24, the apex court had questioned the Centre’s power to allocate coal blocks to companies, saying it has a lot of “legal explanation” to do as the statutory Act empowers only the states to undertake this task.

The court had said that the Centre cannot undermine the Mines and Minerals Act which has given no power to it to allocate coal block to companies.