Supreme Court says allocation of coal blocks arbitrary CBI Director asked to file affidavit

The Supreme Court yesterday came down heavily upon the Government for the allegedly arbitrary allocation of coal blocks. The Court was hearing a batch of PILs filed by members of civil society including Common Cause, an NGO and Advocate M. L. Sharma seeking quashing of allotment of coal blocks alleged as unconstitutional and arbitrary..The Supreme Court yesterday came down heavily upon the Government for the allegedly arbitrary allocation of coal blocks. The Court was hearing a batch of PILs filed by members of civil society including Common Cause, an NGO and Advocate M. L. Sharma seeking quashing of allotment of coal blocks alleged as unconstitutional and arbitrary..A Bench comprising of Justices R.M. Lodha, J. Chelameswar and Madan B. Lokur asked the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) Director to file an affidavit stating that he had gone through the status reports filed by the CBI, and that no details of the probe were being shared with the government..Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for Common Cause, submitted that all the allotments were illegal since the coal blocks were given away freely without any auction, and for extraneous considerations..In his petition, Advocate M.L. Sharma challenged the actions of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal, the President of the Congress party, Sonia Gandhi as well as the party’s office bearers. Sharma alleged that these individuals, having control of the executive office of the Union of India as the ruling party, allotted 194 coal blocks to private companies in an arbitrary manner. He contended that the same amounted to undervaluing public property thereby creating a huge loss of about Rs. 1.64 lakh crores to the country..The Court perused the report submitted by the CBI on the issue of allocation and warned that the allocations would be cancelled if the procedures were not followed..Attorney General Goolam E. Vahanavati submitted that “CBI is not the final word on this” and welcomed a CBI inquiry..The Court granted the Attorney General three weeks time to file an additional counter affidavit on aspects which were earlier not dealt with in the counter affidavit and further directed that the CBI may file a status report before April 26, 2013. The next date of hearing is April 30, 2013.