Ye jo Koyla hai...wo hai halka....patthar jaisa bhari nahi hai...lekin jab daloge isko pani mei...to ho jayega bhari..samjhe ki nahi...
to aisa hi hua bete dino mei jab koyla ghotala ka bhanda phod hua...vistar mei janne ke liye niche likkhe gaye abhivyakti ko padhe...
To start with , there are a few regulations/laws that needs to mentioned in beginning:
MMRDA: Mines and Minerals (Regulations & Development ) Act, 1935
CMNA: Coal Mines Nationalization Act, 1973
Coal Bloc: It is an area having coal and mining of coal in this area is done after getting a license from government.
Captive Coal Bloc: It’s a Coal Bloc where the licensee has under the seal made an agreement that the mined coal will be used for specific purpose for which the license has been received like for power, cement or Iron & Steel.
So the story begins:
With this CMNA act all the coal blocs in India were nationalized and only licensed mining were allowed. After the passage of this act, in 1975 Coal India Limited was established as a government enterprise which then later became a PSU. Till 1991 all the coal mining was done under CIL. Post liberalization hence the advent of private players in the market, mining activities were allowed to private player on condition that it would be for captive purpose on declaration of end use i.e for a specific industry like power, cement and Iron & Steel. With passage of time, in 1993, a screening committee was formed by Ministry of Coal under which secretaries of ministry of Power, steel were involved. This committee was purely bureaucratic and was just to give recommendations on to which private company coal bloc should be allocated. It means that it was Minister of Coal who was to take final call on allocation but at the same time the recommendations had some values.
So finally 3 coal blocs were allocated under P V Narshimha Rao rule in 1993 (name of companies are not important ) then in 1999 under Vajpayee’s government 33 were allocated and during 2004-2014 more than 150 allocation were made. In 2004 Coal secretary Mr. Nair wrote a letter to PMO that due to many applications ,coal blocs screening committee is not being able to address on time . Due to this work load, he sought PMO clearance to go for auction- it had intentions like through bidding, government could generate revenue and process will also be transparent so that as many bidders can apply via tender process. Later in the same year PMO gave clearance from their side and forwarded it to Law Ministry for ensuring the legalities on auctioning process.
Here comes the twist: read patiently – Law Ministry took 2 years to say that auctioning mode will be OK with a few changes in MMRDA provisions. So why they took 2 years , just for giving go ahead. Reason may be - as soon as private players got to know that government will auction for future allocations and they may lose the further requirement of bloc , they started providing the briefcases to all the bureaucrats as well as the minister involved ( sarcastically or even truly we call it as Rajiv Gandhi Briefcase Yojana) . Even before they used to provide the briefcase in order to get clearance from select committee. The proposed auction process was going to be tough for those who were easily getting blocs under screening committee process. They were unhappy with this news and wanted the enforcement to get delayed, and that’s what happened. In 2010 amendment bill to the act was put in the house and in 2012 it was notified in gazette that is it has been passed – we can go ahead via auctioning process.
So the point is all these 8 years i.e from say by secretary by coal ministry in 2004 to 2012 , was this procedural delay or intentional. The answer lies here which is very logical- from 2004 -2012 nearly 150 and more blocs were allotted i.e by the same screening committee because of absence of proposed bill on auctioning. This was a big conspiracy as it was intentional , one could easily understand that even of law ministry in 2004 took two years to give go ahead for auctioning i.e in 2006 plus the time taken from tabling the bill and getting it passed from 2010-2012. All these take only 4 years but it took 8 years – logically it should not take this much time in case of national wealth and had to be passed in maximum a year or 2. But it didn’t happen and many blocs were bogusly allotted. Because the briefcase supply was in process.
Twist in the story:
Our Mr. Vinod Rai during audit found that why there is such a huge rise in allocation from 2004. On digging the matter he found that the law ministry interpreted the law by themselves and allocated blocs to those who even does not have a plant – because captive bloc will be issued as per agreement. But the allocation papers did not have any end use, it just said that the mined coal is intended for the purpose. Mr. Rai submitted a report where he highlighted that had the allocation been made via auctioning government could have save the loss of 1.8 lac crore. He said that the allocations are made in political favoring , since screening committee is not transparent, all the allocation are also illegal. the This was a titanic statement by Mr. Rai. Because as per some information he was even pressurized to drop/ blur the truth, but he refused to do so. With his report it created a sensation in the country. He said that the government allocation was imprope for which the government replied that everything was as per provision and ZERO LOSS was said by many like Kapil Sibbal etc. Subsequently a PIL was filed in Supreme Court to look into the issue. Supreme court under their authority constituted a committee which was to be headed by DIG Ravikant – a man of impeccable image (IPS) . SCI told this committee to scan all the people involved from government side in these allocations starting from 1993-2014. And come with not only the list of the accused but also with the criminal charges against them for looting away the national wealth. But as the investigation progressed , a transfer letter was given to DIG Ravikant . But the hats-off to the PIL person who again went to Supreme court and he said to the court – “SEE WHAT HAS GOVERNMENT DONE”. Then supreme court said government very formly that this investigation would be done by him only and not others.
Finally in 2014 in September , SCI has given the verdict and has cancelled 214 out 218 blocs allotted. Only 4 are operational as 2 out of 4 is under CIL and remaining are with reliance and one other company . These 2 private companies have been told to deposit money which is equal to 2.95X total coal mined till date from the date of mining start. Law ministry during the hearing said that the allocations were made to those who were intended to use it for power, cement , I&S etc here is the point. In CMNA it is given that bloc will be issued to those wo has already running plant. But law ministry interpreted it for their benefit. So SCI said that who has given authority to law ministry to interpret law and bruised them very badly.
So, once again CJI like Mr Lodha has proved that only rule of law prevails in this country and nothing else. The verdict has established the supremacy of victory of rule of law.
After the verdict what has progressed:-
Private companies saying that they have made the investment and will bear a huge loss- My reply to them that they should keep quiet. Because the verdict is very light for them. Supreme court could have put them behind the bars if they wanted , because they are equal partner in this violation. They are telling that they have done what government said but they should have done what law says.
