Meghalaya is willy-nilly in the news following the special CBI court ruling on Friday indicting former Coal Secretary HC Gupta, former Joint Secretary Coal, KS Kropha who is now the Chief Secretary of Meghalaya and KC Samria director in charge coal allocation, of wrongdoing in the allocation of coal blocks to at least a dozen companies. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had come under intense scrutiny of the Comptroller and Auditor-General in 2012 when it was detected that a cumulative loss of Rs 1.86 lakh crores had accrued to the exchequer, simply because a robust tendering process was not followed in the allocation of coal blocks. Serious discrepancies occurred during 2006-09 when Dr Manmohan Singh was holding charge of the Coal Ministry. In fact the role of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) was also suspect as it delayed the introduction of competitive bidding, though the Law and Justice Ministry had cleared the process.
At the preliminary stage of investigation the CBI had named a dozen Indian firms that benefitted from what was considered a ‘subjective’ manner in which decisions to allocate the coal blocks were taken. The CBI in its FIRs had accused several firms that applied for coal blocks of overstating their net worth and failing to disclose prior coal allocations. The firms were also accused of hoarding rather than developing coal allocations. The CBI officials investigating the case speculate that bribery may be involved. Interestingly, after several rounds of questioning Dr Manmohan Singh was not found guilty of wrongdoing although Gupta an officer known among his colleagues and juniors to be upright, claims he had only executed orders of the PMO.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee report on Coal and Steel submitted in 2012 found that all coal blocks distributed between 1993 and 2008 were done in an unauthorized manner and lacked transparency. It proposed that allotment of all mines where production is yet to start should be cancelled. What made matters worse and strengthened the allegation of wrongdoing is that the coal auction by the NDA Government in 2015 earned it a whopping Rs 80,000 crore after sales of 11 coal blocks mainly in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Odisha, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand.
As can be expected, retired and serving civil servants are up in arms against the CBI Court ruling. Their contention is that civil servants place the facts of the case before the political executives and the latter take the final decision. But the other question is whether civil servants should also not safeguard the nation’s interests. After all they work for the country and not for a particular government in power. Indira Gandhi was perhaps instrumental in giving a death blow to the steel frame of India when she insisted on a bureaucracy that was loyal to her government! The rest is history.