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CVC asks CBI to look into coalgate amid Anna-PM spat

-The Times of India

The Central Vigilance Commission has asked the CBI to examine a complaint about alleged losses suffered by the public exchequer in the allocation of coal blocks between 2006 and 2009, in what can potentially be fodder for civil society as well as the opposition seeking to attack the government over Coalgate.

Although the complaint of BJP MPs Prakash Javadekar and Hansraj Ahir was forwarded by the CVC to the CBI a month ago, the agency's response will coincide with the widening confrontation over the alleged failure to auction coal blocks.

Sources said the CBI was expected to take a decision next week after the return of its director A P Singh from Bhutan. "If we find prima facie wrongdoing in the allocation, a preliminary inquiry will be registered and a formal investigation will begin. At present, it is just a reference and we are analyzing it," a senior CBI officer said.

In their complaint to the CVC about four months ago, the two BJP MPs drew the investigation agencies' attention to the way the government had gone about allocating coal blocks to private players, especially after an in-principle decision was taken in 2006 to allocate these through auction. "Instead of resorting to auction or waiting for the new policy to be adopted, the government speeded up the allocations through the old policy," Ahir said. "We have demanded a detailed investigation into the way coal blocks were allocated starting 2006," the Lok Sabha MP who is also a member of the parliamentary committee on coal and steel said. Both Ahir and Javadekar welcomed the CVC's move, saying there was an "urgent" need to get to the bottom of the entire issue.

The opposition has attacked the government over Coalgate since a draft CAG report estimated that its decision not to auction coal blocks fetched private companies Rs 1. 8 lakh crore in "undue gains". The issue acquired a new dimension last week when Team Anna, breaking away from its policy not to attack the PM for corruption under the UPA, held Manmohan Singh responsible for the scam. The PM's resultant threat to quit public life if charges were proven and the refusal of civil society to back off from its serious charge appears to have opened another front for a besieged government.

Civil society was already girding up, dismissing the CVC's move for a CBI probe as a "sham" and repeating its demand for an independent probe by a panel of six retired judges. "These investigations are meant to give PM a clean chit. Why is the PM scared of investigation?'' Arvind Kejriwal said.

Importantly, coal minister Sriparaksh Jaiswal had only on Wednesday dismissed the demand for any probe into the allocation of coal blocks.

Ahir said in 2004-05, while it was time to cancel the blocks allocated earlier because the companies could not stick to the production timeline, and if necessary to revoke their bank guarantees, "the government actually went ahead and allotted more blocks".

The opposition leaders have drawn the attention of the investigators to the fact that the PM was in charge of the coal ministry during a significant part of the allocations. They have also given details of some companies that had been trying to sell coal blocks illegally in the market.

The CAG, in its draft report, had said that in October 2004, a meeting with the PM as coal minister decided that applications for mines received after June 28, 2004 would be processed under the new competitive bidding regime. The government chose this as the cut-off date since the intention to introduce competitive bidding for coal blocks was first made public on this date at a ministry meeting with stakeholders, the CAG said. "However, the ministry of coal continued to follow the screening committee route for subsequent allotments till date with the approval of the Prime Minister's Office," the CAG's draft report said.

The draft report, first published by TOI on March 22, said the government had extended "undue gains" of Rs 10.76 lakh crore by allotting without bidding 155 coal blocks to some 100 private and state-run commercial entities. The final report has pared the value of the undue gains to Rs 1.86 lakh crore by removing state-run entities from the audit report. The final CAG report is yet to be tabled in Parliament. "There was no legal impediment to the introduction of a transparent and objective process of competitive bidding for allocation of coal blocks for captive mining as per the July 2006 legal opinion of the ministry of law and justice, and this could have been done through an administrative decision. However, the ministry of coal went ahead with the allocation of coal blocks through the screening committee route and advertized in September 2006 for allocation of 38 coal blocks and continued with the process till 2009," the CAG said in its draft report.