Some of the country’s leading power and steel producing companies, including the Sterlite group, Arcelor Mittal, Reliance Energy, Jindal Steel and Power and Navbharat Power (of Essar Power), could lose their captive coal blocks this week.
A high-level inter-ministerial group (IMG) of the coal ministry that meets here on Friday will review the fate of half a dozen blocks that were allocated between 2006 and 2009, against which the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed FIRs citing alleged irregularities in allocations.
?We have got the go-ahead from the government that the IMG can undertake a performance review and make its recommendations on all those cases where the CBI has filed FIRs/chargesheets,? a senior coal ministry official told The Indian Express on Wednesday.
Initially, amid apprehensions of a possible turf war with the CBI on the issue of taking a final call on the future of these blocks on which the investigating agency registered FIRs, the coal ministry had approached the Prime Minister’s Office on May 21 to seek its nod on allowing the IMG to decide on these blocks. Acting on the PMO’s directive, the coal ministry subsequently approached the law ministry to ascertain whether its IMG can be empowered to take a call on these blocks. The law ministry has recently given its go-ahead to allow the IMG to deliberate and make its recommendations on these mines.
The coal ministry official contended that while the CBI would continue to investigate the ?criminality? of the firms involved in alleged irregularities, the IMG would engage in performance review of the coal blocks on established parameters and make its recommendations.
While the coal ministry officials are tight-lipped on the possible outcome of the IMG meet, the overwhelming view is that these 14 firms could face “major” penalties, including de-allocation of the mines, for failing to meet the stipulated block development milestones and not bringing them into operation. The IMG has also intensified the push to penalise another 40 “errant” captive block holders by either deducting their bank guarantees or asking some of them to furnish guarantees in a time-bound manner.
The coal ministry at the behest of the IMG had served show-cause notices to allocatees for 30 blocks last month and is preparing to serve 56 more notices to those holding captive mines that were earlier classified as part of the erstwhile ‘no-go’ areas. The actions by the IMG could offer the PMO sufficient reasons to inform the Supreme Court that it has not dragged its feet on pursuing allegations of corruption in coal block allocations.
The government had to recently face the Supreme Court’s ire for not aiding the CBI with documents in its probe in the coal allocation scam and was directed to file a comprehensive affidavit justifying the allocation of 164 coal blocks. The apex court said that the agency was “struggling” in its probe in the absence of documents not being supplied to it relating to the allocation of 204 coal blocks out, of which 40 have been de-allocated.