Parakh satisfied with ruling, says it vindicates his stand
NEW DELHI: Former coal secretary PC Parakh is a satisfied man, with the Supreme Court vindicating his stand that a screening committee for coal allocation has no legal basis and therefore, illegal.
Parakh said his position that the CBI has not understood the case has also been upheld with the investigating agency announcing closure of the case against him.
“Whatever I had written in my book ( Crusader or Conspirator? Coalgate and other Truths ) and said all these days stands vindicated by today’s Supreme Court ruling. I am satisfied,” Parakh told HT. He also highlighted that that the apex court ruling points to steps that the government should have taken while allocating coal blocks.
“If the government had listened to what I had suggested and presented in my report (on coal allocation), the country would not have had to face this situation,” said Parakh.
“Since I always maintained that a screening committee has no legal basis, I had suggested to the government that they should bring an amendment to the Coal Mine Nationalisation Act and introduce a bidding system… but government chose to ignore… today Supreme Court has said in its ruling,” he added.
He also said that while “the Prime Minister had approved the bidding system, for more than eight years no action was taken.”
On coal blocks allocation in the future, Parakh said that he hoped the government would conduct a fair and transparent bidding process.
He, however, urg ed the Supreme Court not to cancel the allocations, stating that such a move would have serious implications on India’s economy.
The coal ministry had set up of a screening committee in July 1992 to examine proposals from private power companies for captive mining on a first-cum-firstserve basis. The committee’s guidelines gave preference to large projects of power and steel companies. During 1993-2010, the government allocated 218 coal blocks, out of which 24 were taken away at different points in time, leaving the total number of allocated blocks at 194.