Economic
Times: New Delhi: Thursday, 25 September 2014.
A one-line
entry in BJP MP Hansraj Ahir's bio-data on the Lok Sabha website that lists
"environmental protection" as his special interest is hardly a clue
to the fact that he is indeed the man who set the ball rolling in the coal
block allocation case, which concluded today with the Supreme Court cancelling
all but four of the allotments.
Ahir, who
represents Chandrapur in Maharashtra, is the person who raised the alarm over
the allocation of coal blocks for free, first with the parliamentary committee
on coal and steel and later with the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC).
"I come
from Maharashtra, where coal reserves are among the lowest, only 3.4% of all
coal reserves. These were being allocated. Not just that, they were being
allocated for free and without auction," he said.
The
environmental havoc caused by mining had made him very cautious about the
allocation procedures. From 2004 till about 2006, he kept raising the matter,
writing frequently to the Prime Minister, the chief vigilance commissioner and
even the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India. Many in his party
doubted whether his efforts would amount to much.
In 2007,
lawyer Sudiep Shrivastava moved the first application on the issue under the
Right to Information Act, demanding details of how and to whom coal blocks had
been allotted and the state of their productivity. For six months, nothing
happened.
"Then an
MP, probably from the Left, raised a question in Parliament on the same lines.
We both got the same answers, at the same time," says Shrivastava, who
credits Ahir for being diligent with his pursuit of an audit and vigilance
enquiry. Information from the response to the RTI query formed the basis for a
lot of the legal work on the issue.
After Nitin
Gadkari took over as BJP chief in 2009, current information and broadcasting
minister Prakash Javadekar was asked to help Ahir press his case for an
examination of the allocations. The party was finally coming around to the fact
that the coal allocation issue could be a potential time bomb for the
Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government.
The added
heft to the demand finally led to an audit by the CAG as well as an adverse CVC
report. "In 2010, when the CAG came out with its figures of loss to the
exchequer, the UPA government lost an opportunity. They should have formed a
committee, cancelled the coal blocks and re-allocated them through new norms.
Instead, the Supreme Court had to step in," Ahir told ET.
He admits to
a sense of closure with regard to the coal block allocation issue. "I'm
just happy that what belongs to the country has reverted and is not being given
away for free," the four-time MP said.
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