NDA's coal block policy and new regulations face critical questions

Did consumers and state governments benefit from it? Or did the private sector gain more through the back door?

On April 12, Chhattisgarh’s newly elected chief minister Bhupesh Baghel wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi claiming that the Centre’s coal block policy could cause his state to lose potential revenue of Rs 9 trillion over the life of the coal blocks in its geography. At the same time, two recent public interest litigations (PILs) have questioned the handing over of these allocated coal blocks by state power companies to the private sector through secretive mining, development and operation (MDO) contracts.

Losses aside, Baghel’s letter and the PILs raise policy-level questions that have gone unasked for the four years