Congress alleges massive coal scam by BJP govt, seeks ED probe into tweaks in mine policy

New Delhi: The Congress on Sunday accused the BJP government at the Centre of having committed a massive coal scam causing a huge loss of revenue to the government after favouring prime minister Narendra Modi’s ‘friend’.

Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters, party spokesperson and the chairman, Media and Publicity (Communication Department), AICC, Pawan Khera asked the Modi government whether it would order an ED investigation into this sordid saga.

Giving details, Khera said that the Modi government tweaked the coalmine allocation policy in the year 2015 claiming that it will make the process transparent and corruption-free. Later the policy was withdrawn after making massive losses.

‘Complaining BJP MPs made ministers’

However, Khera added, two of the BJP MPs, RK Singh and Rajeev Chandrashekhar, had questioned the new policy fearing corruption. The two MPs were later made ministers and they stopped raising any objections after that.

He asked, why did the Modi government ignore the allegations of gross malpractices, rigging and cartelisation by its own leaders? “Was it to benefit a select set of cronies and their shell companies, as highlighted by the CAG?” he asked.

'New law helped favoured Adani'

The Congress spokesperson asked why the Modi government brought in a new law and amended the existing mining laws, which left open a window of discretion in the regulations for assigning coal mines to its ‘crony friends’, particularly Adani?

He said that for the first time, the Modi government inserted a provision in the law allowing State governments, which were freshly allotted mines, to continue the MDO contracts that the previous owner of their mines had before the court cancelled them.

Khera asked, was it not true that this exceptional provision came in handy for a BJP-ruled state government to reinstate Adani Group companies as MDOs for two mines?

Coal auction

The Congress spokesperson said, that when the Modi government brought a new coal auction and allocation policy to distribute over 200 blocks of coal with over 41 billion tonnes of coal in 2015, it was objected to by RK Singh and Rajeev Chandrashekhar, as they cautioned that the reforms were ‘hastily drafted’ and would allow private companies to rig auctions and corner huge benefits at a cost to the public.

Khera said the apprehension of the two MPs came true when in 2016, the CAG report gave evidence of how dubious the coal auctions had turned out. CAG also observed collusion in at least 11 blocks where there was potential collusion among bidders, i.e. ‘it could not draw assurance that the potential level of competition was achieved’. He said, in a particularly alarming case, the CAG said 3 out of 5 bidders for a mine belonged to the same parent company. Two of them had bid from the same IP address! The CAG presented the auction as an anonymous ‘case study’.

For the first two years, the Modi government portrayed a rosy picture of the auctions and revenue generated, Khera said, while adding, but by 2017, the cracks became obvious and the then coal minister admitted in the Parliament that following up on complaints of cartelisation and lack of ‘fair value’, bids for four mines were cancelled.

The Congress leader also referred to reports of government-owned companies having signed private companies to mine the block on their behalf. “Unsurprisingly, the Adani Group has bagged the highest number of such contracts”, he remarked.

Dropping clear hints that all this will be thoroughly probed once the government changes at the Centre, he said, “While we don’t misuse them, but we also know how to use the investigating agencies like the ED and CBI,” saying that coming months and years are not going to be good for all those who indulged in coal scam and caused loss to the public exchequer.