The Supreme Court said today that all coal block allocations since 1993 till 2010 before pre-auction era have been done in illegal manner.

While pronouncing its judgment on a batch of petitions seeking quashing of 194 coal blocks allocations during the regime of previous governments, the apex court said no objective criteria was followed and guidelines were breached in coal block allocations. The court said coal block allocation done by screening committee was not fair and transparent.

The apex court also made it clear that it was not for the court to evaluate the advantages of competitive bidding as compared to other methods of distribution of natural resources.

The Court said further hearing was required to determine whether there is a need for cancelling 218 coal block allocations.

A special bench headed by Chief Justice RM Lodha delivered the verdict on the two-year-old petitions that were based on Comptroller Auditor General’s report, estimating a loss of 1.86 lakh crore rupees caused due to the arbitrary allocations.

The coal blocks allocated are in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh. These were allotted to private companies between 2004 to March 2011.

The bench, also comprising justice MB Lokur and justice Kurian Joseph has been monitoring the CBI probe into the scam and special court has been set up to exclusively deal with the prosecution of cases arising out of it in which politicians and businessmen have been named as accused.