The Supreme Court has deallocated 214 coal blocks out of the 218 coal blocks allocated since 1993. The 4 coal blocks which are exempt from the verdict arerun by the Central government with no joint venture with the private sector.
The Supreme Court said that it saw no reason to save the blocks as the allocations were arbitrary. All the 214 mines have also be fined at Rs 295 per tonnne for the coal already extracted by them.
For all the blocks deallocated, the government is now free to hold auctions or give them to the central firm, Coal India.
It has asked coal blocks which are already operational will get 6 months to wrap up their operations. After 6 months, the blocks will be handed over to Coal India. But the power producers dependent on these coal blocks will not suffer as even after Coal India takes them over, it will continue to provide coal to the power producers.
For the CBI enquiry that is already on against the coal allocations during the UPA regime, the court said that the enquiry will continue. The Court has also said that coal from captive mines can be used only to generate power and cannot be used for any competitive bidding.
