New Delhi: The Supreme Court yesterday reserved its verdict on the fate of 218 coal blocks whose allocation since 1993 it had held to be arbitrary, non-transparent and illegal.
A bench of Chief Justice R M Lodha, Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice Kurian Joseph reserved the verdict after a day-long hearing on the consequences of its decision declaring the allocation process by the steering committee and under government dispensation arbitrary and illegal.
The hearing saw the government opposing the plea by the coal block allottees and other stakeholders — power producers and sponge iron manufacturers — represented by their associations, for the grant of individual hearing by a committee to determine their innocence and look into the investments already made by them on the coal blocks allocated to them.
“According to me, individual hearing is not required. We don’t want another impact of the judgment” and illegal allocations must go, said Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi.
On August 25, the apex court had suggested that a three-member committee headed by a retired apex court judge to go into each of the cases before taking a final call on their fate, but the suggestion was opposed by the government in the subsequent hearing of the matter on September 1.
At the outset of the hearing yesterday, the government told the court that it favoured auction of all the 218 blocks, but if the court so agreed, 40 coal blocks that are already in production for years and six other coal blocks in which production can commence any time may be exempted.
Defending the classification of 40 plus six, Rohatgi said that they were already in production and in some cases for years and they were both in public and private holdings.
He reiterated that the court’s August 25 verdict had held that coal blocks were allocated in an illegal, arbitrary and non-transparent manner and thus its logical consequence was that all must be cancelled.
“This (allocation) is found to be illegal and the result of illegality is that all must go and be cancelled”, Rohatgi said, adding that “this is the only way we can go forward and we have applied our mind to all the options.”
He said that one option was to let the 40 mines function until an alternative transaction took place or state-run Coal India Ltd would step in to take over the operations without affecting the workforce.
IANS
