Coal block controversy: A news round-up

NEWS: In an interesting turn of events, senior Delhi government officials may appear on Saturday before the inter-ministerial group looking into the coal block allocations. The Indian Express newspaper reports that the panel headed by additional coal secretary Zohra Chatterji will on Saturday ask the Delhi government why a block allocated to it in Madhya Pradesh remained unexplored for six years.

The Delhi government was allotted the Mahan-II block in 2006, along with the Haryana Power Generation Corp. Ltd, the newpaper said in its report. This is the first time a Congress party-led government is being called to testify on coal blocks, the report added. The panel is likely to take a call on taking back the blocks on 15 September.

Meanwhile, the Business Standard newspaper said the coal ministry is likely to ready its response to the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) report on coal block allocations by 14 September. The report said the coal ministry is likely to counter the CAG’s arguments on at least five counts—calculating the quantum of extractable reserves in blocks based on averages, cost of coal production and how it varies geographically, geological constraints in mining, taxation offsetting a part of financial gains extended to companies, and valuation of captive coal blocks vis-à-vis the price of coal set by Coal India Ltd.

Meanwhile, Mint on Saturday profiled 57-year-old Manoj Jayaswal, who heads the Abhijeet Group, which has been named by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) this week in its ongoing probe into irregularities in the allotment of coal blocks. The report details how the Abhijeet Group grew in record time.

CNN-IBN news channel ran a story on Hansraj Ahir, a Bharatiya Janata Party member of Parliament from Chandrapur, Maharashtra, who, the channel said, was the first to raise concerns about the coal block allotments in 2005 when he wrote a series of letters to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and then coal minister Shibu Soren between 2005 and 2007, but got no response. The Congress, however, refutes Ahir’s role, the channel said. “We can’t say he exposed it,” it cited Congress leader Harish Rawat as saying.