New Delhi:
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has, last month, indicted the government for costing the country thousands of crores by allocating coal fields from 2004 to 2009 without checking the financial and other records of private firms who applied for coal licenses.
The CBI had presented its findings in a report to the Supreme Court.
Now, a parliamentary committee wants to cancel all coal blocks that were allocated between 1993 and 2004 where coal production has not yet begun. The committee finds that "natural resources were distributed without following any transparent system and without generating any revenue for the government." For this, the committee wants "everyone who was directly or indirectly party to such decision-making" to be investigated and penalised.
The Standing Committee on Coal and Steel shared its report with Parliament today. It is headed by Kalyan Banerjee, a lawmaker from the Trinamool Congress.
Allegations of "Coal-Gate" - the moniker for an alleged expansive swindle - first surfaced in August last year when the government's auditor or CAG said that by not auctioning coal fields, the government had lost Rs 1.86 lakh crore between 2004 and 2009. For some of these years, the Prime Minister held direct charge of the Coal Ministry. The auditor's report did not directly indict the Prime Minister or his office.
But the CBI was asked to investigate the coal policy followed since 1993 based on a complaint filed by Prakash Javadekar of the BJP. The coal investigation by the CBI will therefore also cover the period when the BJP-led NDA coalition was in power. It was replaced by the Congress-led UPA alliance in 2004.
The investigation has turned into a multi-installment nightmare for the government, with the latest episode centred around reports that Law Minister Ashwani Kumar reviewed and made changes to the CBI's report that was submitted to the Supreme Court last month.