Coal Scam: Jindal 'honcho' Naveen permitted to travel abroad

A Special Court on Friday gave permission to Congress MP and industrialist Naveen Jindal, an accused in the coal blocks allocation scam, to travel abroad for business purposes from June 14 to 29.

The permission for Jindal to travel abroad comes even as the NDA Government on Thursday said it will auction ten more coal mines in the third tranche with reserves of 858.19 million tonnes for steel, cement as well as captive power plants. It said that the process will be completed by August end.

The government has so far auctioned 29 coal blocks in two tranches to private companies and garnered over Rs.2 lakh crores, surpassing CAG's loss estimates of Rs.1.86 lakh crores in allotment of mines earlier without auction.

"We have lined up 10 coal blocks and all of these are in the unregulated sector. The auctions will be held from August 11 to August 17. There has been lot of demand from the unregulated sectors in the nature of industries in cement, steel and so on. So, these are the blocks which would be put up for auction," Coal Secretary Anil Swarup said at a press conference here.

Of the total estimated geological reserves, these mines have extractable coal of about 356.245 million tonnes and they are located in Maharashtra, Jharkhand,Chhattisgarh and Odisha, he said.

"The notice will be issued on June 8. Bid due dates that is the submission of the documents is July 21. The government will execute agreements with successful bidders by August 31 and so the process by and large will be completed by August 31," Swarup added.

The Supreme Court in September last year had cancelled allocation of 204 coal mines to companies without auction terming the same as arbitrary and illegal.

Former Minister of State for Coal Dasari Narayan Rao and former Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Koda are among those facing trial in the case.

The coal allocation scam relates to the central government's allocation of the nation's coal deposits to public sector entities (PSEs) and private companies. In a draft report issued in March 2014, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) office accused the Government of India of allocating coal blocks in an inefficient manner between 2004 and 2009.

During the summer of 2012, the then opposition BJP filed a complaint, which resulted in a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into whether the allocation of the coal blocks was in fact influenced by

corruption.

The essence of the CAG's argument is that the Centre had the authority to allocate coal blocks by a process of competitive bidding, but chose not to. As a result, both public sector enterprises (PSEs) and private firms paid less than they might have otherwise.

In its draft report in March 2014, the CAG estimated that the "windfall gain" to the allocatees was Rs.10673 billion or USD 170 billion.

The CAG Final Report tabled in Parliament put the figure at Rs.1856 billion or USD 29 billion)

On August 27, 2012, then Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh read a statement in Parliament rebutting the CAG's report, both in its reading of the law and in the alleged cost of the government's

policies.

While the initial CAG report suggested that coal blocks could have been allocated more efficiently, resulting in more revenue to the government, at no point did it suggest that corruption was involved in the allocation of coal.