The UPA may find the charge of allowing private companies to profit from coal allocation more damaging than the 2G scam
With the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report on coal set to be tabled in Parliament on Friday and the Bharatiya Janata Party gathering its forces for a full fledged attack, the Monsoon session threatens to be a stormy one.
While ‘Coalgate’ resembles the 2G spectrum scam both in terms of the emerging evidence as well as the government’s defence, what makes the issue potentially incendiary is the opportunity the opposition has to drag the Prime Minister directly into midfield.
In the 2G scandal, the Prime Minister and the Finance Secretary sought spectrum auctions which A. Raja, who was Telecom Minister at the time, refused. But in Coalgate, it was the Coal Secretary who apparently sought auctions despite existing legislation, which the PM, with direct control of the coal portfolio at the time, seemingly ignored or overruled. This is the pivotal difference, though the forensics will only emerge once the CAG report is tabled.

STRIKING SIMILARITIES

Both the 2G and the Coalgate scandals chronicle massive losses for the state exchequer with corresponding gain to private parties through the involvement or decision-making of key politicians and bureaucrats. Both spectrum and coal impact the daily lives of crores of Indian citizens. In both cases, the loss arose out of the use of discretionary powers to select and administer the mechanism for the allocation of the natural resource. For 2G, first-come, first-served (FCFS), and for coal, application-based selection was chosen over auctions. In both spectrum and coal, the allocations were made based on an application which required minimum detail, where awards can be justified by officials with scant public scrutiny. Spectrum allocation was guided by the Unified Access Service Licence guidelines while coal followed ‘captive block selection’ guidelines. Despite these guidelines being available online, transparency has come under serious question. The selection committees in both cases were bureaucrats from across Ministries/States who still failed to implement any safeguards.