New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday said all coal blocks allocated from 1993 to 2010 were illegal as the process of allocation by the screening committee was illegal, unfair and suffered from vice of arbitrariness.
A bench comprising of Chief Justice R M Lodha said, no objective criteria was followed and guidelines were breached in the coal block allocation, adding that all allocations were done in illegal manner and that it suffers from vice of arbitrariness.
Here’s a look at the series of events so far:
-July 1992: The coal ministry orders the setting up of a screening committee to consider proposals from private power companies for captive mining.
-Screening committee guidelines give preference to large projects of power and steel companies. Blocks to be allocated on a first-cum-first-served basis.
-As many as 70 coal fields were allocated between 1993 and 2005, 53 were given away in 2006, 52 in 2007, 24 in 2008, 16 in 2009 and one in 2010.
-Altogether, 216 block were allocated between 1993 and 2010, out of which 24 were taken away at different points in time, effectively leaving the total number of allocated blocks at 194.
-March 2012: A draft report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) says that windfall gains to allottees on account of the allocation process was Rs.10.7 trillion. The final report in August 2012 tones down the figure to Rs.1.76 trillion.
-The auditor says that although by 2006, the government had the legal fiat to auction coal fields for captive use, it chose not to do so.
-March-October 2012: Allegations against several politicians and industrialists surface in the media, accusing them of having benefited directly or indirectly from the coal block allocation process. These include Subodh Kant Sahai, Naveen Jindal, S. Jagathrakshakan, Prem Chand Gupta and Ajay Sancheti.
-31 May 2012: On a complaint by two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, Hansraj Ahir and Prakash Javadekar, the Central Vigilance Commission orders a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the allocations. Simultaneously, the income-tax department begins a probe.
-June 2012: Coal ministry forms an inter-ministerial panel to review the process of allocation of blocks and to decide either on de-allocations or forfeiture of bank guarantees. The government has taken back about 80 coal fields thus far, while bank guarantees in 42 cases have been forfeited.
-17 August 2012: The final CAG report is tabled in Parliament.
-September 2012: The Supreme Court begins monitoring the CBI probe into the coal field allocations
-March 2013: The Supreme Court asks CBI director Ranjit Sinha not to share details of its investigation with the government.
-23 April 2013: Parliamentary standing committee slams the allocation process, says allocations between 1993 and 2008 done arbitrarily and that blocks which are undeveloped should be taken back. It also recommends that all those involved in the process should be examined.
-26 April 2013: CBI director Ranjit Sinha admits that the investigation report was shared with the then law minister Ashwani Kumar.
-10 May 2013: Ashwani Kumar resigns.
-11 June 2013: CBI registers first information report (FIR) against Naveen Jindal and Dasari Narayana Rao.
-16 October 2013: CBI files an FIR against industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla and former coal secretary P.C. Parakh.
-14 April 2014: Parakh says in his book that the authority of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was undermined by former coal ministers Shibu Soren and Dasari Narayan Rao. The two ministers, he says, aided by industrialist Naveen Jindal, scuttled the move to adopt the process of open competitive bidding for auctioning coal fields.
-July 2014: The Supreme Court sets up a special CBI court to try all coal field allocation
cases.
-25 August 2014: The CBI decides to close its case against Birla and Parakh. The Supreme Court court also declares that all coal blocks allocated between 1993 and 2010 were illegal.
-1 September, 2014- The apex court reserves its final verdict on the coalgate scam. The court affixes the date of declaration of the verdict as September 9, 2014.
