The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to alter its order allowing cancelled coal blocks to continue operation till March 2015.
An application filed by a PIl petitioner Ml Sharma, on whose petition the Court ordered cancellation of coal blocks, alleged that companies were extracting coal in excess of their lease condition and sought immediate ban on further extraction.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Hl Dattu said that its order of September 24 allowed cancelled coal block owners to continue another six months before winding up operations. “If they want to excavate coal, no one can stop them. They have been given six months’ time. Why should court direct them not to extract coal during this period,” the bench said.
The Court order had affected 214 coal blocks of which 176 stood cancelled while 42 that were either operational or ready to operate were permitted six months to shut down. Sharma alleged that the companies extracted three to four times more coal per day which amounted to commercial exploitation.
He submitted that an immediate ban was necessary to stop companies from exploiting the natural resource prior to exiting business. The Court refused to alter its previous order which had imposed a further condition on the cancelled blocks to pay up Rs295 per ton of coal extracted by them since 1993 when the blocks came into operation.
The Court found illegality in all allocations made since 1993 to 2009 as licenses were either handed out arbitrarily or the allocation process adopted by the Screening Committee and Centre was not transparent.