The Coal Conundrum

Way back in 2004, as Secretary of the Ministry of Coal, Government of India, the author had proposed opening up the coal sector for commercial mining and allocation of coal blocks through open competitive bidding. Had these proposals acted upon, ‘Coalgate’ and India’s current dependence on imported coal could have been avoided.The Comptroller & Auditor General of India in its report estimated that the Government’s failure to follow competitive bidding resulted in a notional loss of Rs1.80 lakh crore to the exchequer. Following this report, a PIL was filed in the Supreme Court of India. In an unprecedented order the Supreme Court of India cancelled all allocations of coal blocks made from 1993 to 2010, holding them as illegal and arbitrary.Simultaneously, the CBI started investigations into the allocation of coal blocks and filed a number of FIRs including one against the author. Though after thorough investigation the CBI filed three closure reports, the CBI Court decided to take cognigence of criminal offences against the author, industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla and the former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh.This book is an attempt to show the inability of the Government to take right decisions at the right time and that of investigating agencies and courts to comprehend complex issues involved in economic and technical decision-making that has taken a heavy toll on the country’s economy and polity, apart from demoralising the civil services