Coal news and updates

The Supreme Court has refused to restrain coal companies that have been asked to wind up their coal blocks within six months from extracting and selling coal in the market on a commercial basis. A bench headed by Chief Justice HL Dattu on Thursday said the companies could not be restrained from excavating coal during the time granted to them by the apex court for winding up operations. 

 

"They had a licence. It was cancelled in a day. In the meantime, they were allowed to excavate. This court has not said that it should be 100, 1000, 10,000. It only said that they would wind up in six months. They can excavate in the meantime," the bench said. 

 

"Should this court now say that it should be 200 (tonnes) per day?" the CJI asked while dismissing advocate Manohar Lal Sharma's petition. 

 

Earlier, on Sharma's petition the court had cancelled allotments of 214 out of 218 coal blocks, sparing only two blocks allotted to central public sector units NTPCBSE 0.54 % and SAIL and two blocks allotted to Reliance PowerBSE 0.73 % for ultramega power projects. 

 

It had also allowed the Centre to take over the 42 functional coal blocks, giving six months from March 31, 2015 to wind up operations. Besides, it had imposed a penalty of Rs 295 per tonne on coal illegally extracted by these companies so far as also during the window of six months. 

 

On Thursday, Sharma claimed in an urgent out-of-court hearing that all these companies had begun extracting maximum coal from the blocks and selling it in the open market. 

 

There's a huge difference between penalty imposed by the court and market price, which stood at Rs 3,000-Rs 6,000 per tonne, his petition said, claiming these companies had gone on an overdrive to extract and sell coal in the market before the six-month window shut down. 

 

More than 1,000 overloaded trucks have been carrying coal from these blocks day and night and the government has not been recording the quantity of fuel being transported, Sharma alleged. 

 

He cited the example of Raigadh district in Chhattisgarh, claiming that there were no checkpoints to keep track of such coal. This could result in huge losses to the exchequer, he said.

 

 

Source: ET