States blame Centre for coal block allocation irregularities

After West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, Jharkahand, Odisha and Chhatisgadh today told the Supreme Court that they played a minimal role in coal blocks allocation and squarely blamed the Centre for alleged irregularities in coal blocks allocation.
Appearing before a bench headed by Justice R M Lodha, the counsel, appearing for Jharkahand and Chhatisgadh, said there is very little involvement of state governments in coal blocks allocations which were mainly decided by the Centre.
Odisha government also submitted the central government had exercised "pervasive control" in allocation of coal blocks and framed its own guidelines for it.
"The allocation of coal blocks was made by the central government from 1993 to 2012 by evolving its own mechanism by constituting a screening committee which framed its own guidelines and also followed the guidelines framed by the Ministry of Coal from time to time," the counsel, appearing for Odisha, said.

Earlier, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh had said they were merely following the Centre's directions.
"The Centre is the master and we have just meticulously followed its direction in allocation of coal blocks. We have no other role in it," they had said adding "our stand is that the Centre is the master and we followed its decision.
The apex court had sought responses from seven mining states-- Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal-- after it had observed that the Centre was giving "contradictory" stands on allocations.