The Centre today informed the Supreme Court that the de-allocation process for the coal blocks made between 1993-2008 has been put on motion and the private parties to whom allocation has been made for 61 blocks have been asked to clear deficiencies within four to six weeks for obtaining mining lease.
Presenting the Centre's statement, Attorney General G E Vahanvati submitted before the three-judge bench headed by Justice R M Lodha that failure to clear deficiencies within specified period would lead to deallocation of coal block allocations where environment and forest clearance stage one have not been obtained and where state governments are not executing mining leases in spite of all approvals having been obtained.
The apex court however, questioned the Centre over the functioning of the screening committee for allocation of coal blocks in which certain private companies were allegedly preferred despite not figuring in the recommendations by competent authorities.
The court was also critical of the centre for its “laxity” in de-allocating coal blocks from entities which held them for long without meeting necessary clearances even as
de-allocation has been put in motion. The bench said it was necessary for the court to know the norms for allocation as there were no affidavits of the members of screening committee who were involved in the decision-making process for allocation.
In a related development, the CBI today sought the Supreme Court's permission to forward its proposal to the Home Ministry for issuance of Letters Rogatory (LR) to Malaysia for seeking information about a firm which is claimed to be a part of consortium of an Indian firm accused in coalgate.
Without naming the foreign firm, the CBI, in its application, said that during the course of probe in the case, it has been felt to take up the investigation with a foreign company. It said the purpose is to ascertain the facts related to net worth and also to verify the genuineness of the documents as submitted by the accused company in support of its claim.
