-The Hindu Even as UPA-II and the Opposition are bracing themselves for confrontation in and outside Parliament over coal blocks allocations during 2004-09, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Coal Ministry are ready with their defence: the policy imperative was to augment production by supplementing Coal India’s efforts with private participation within the parameters of law. According to documents available with The Hindu , the arguments, which the government hopes to present...
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Reforms, competition in distribution and end to coal monopoly only antidotes to power failures-Arvind Panagariya
-The Economic Times The power failure in India on July 30-31 was big news in US media. When the radio and TV stations began calling with the question whether this spelt the end to India's claims to global-power status, my first reaction was to remind them that a similar failure of the grid in 2003 had drowned the entire Northeast and Midwest in the US and Ontario in Canada into darkness. But,...
More »Loss figure not sacrosanct, we are open to debate: CAG-Pradeep Thakur
-The Times of India The estimate of Rs 1.86 lakh crore mentioned in the CAG report on Coalgate as "windfall gains" to private players who bagged coal mines allocated by the government without bidding is not sacrosanct, according to senior sources in the auditing agency. "We have never claimed that our estimate is not open to debate," sources said, adding that even the expression "windfall gains" was not that of the auditor....
More »Go beyond CAG: Shout less about notional losses, do more on genuine coal sector reform
-The Times of India Expectedly, CAG's reports on coal, power and Delhi airport have raised a storm. Yes, one takeaway is the need for transparency in resource disbursal and use, be it minerals or land. But if CAG - whose job is to keep accounts - habitually hypothesises about presumptive revenue loss owing ostensibly to absence of this or that policy in the past, where will it end? Its coal audit...
More »CAG reports, instead of shedding light, increasingly spread confusion
-The Economic Times The three reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on coal, ultra-mega power projects and airports, playing out in the public discourse as major indictments of corruption and of the government, serve only to spread confusion and convert infrastructure building into a political battleground. The reports are ill-informed by commercial logic, sometimes deficient in factual detail. However, since they bear the authority of a constitutional body, the...
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