In a major setback to the Maharashtra State Power Generation Company Ltd (MahaGenco) today, the Bombay High Court recalled its earlier order for independent third party sampling of coal at loading and unloading points.
MahaGenco had been banking heavily on sampling reports which had indicated poor quality of coal supplied by Western Coalfields Limited (WCL) and it had also supported the Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research's (CIMFR) findings, while WCL and Coal India Ltd (CIL) had claimed that these were flawed, as well as violated statutory norms.
After a two-day marathon hearing of a PIL, a division bench of Nagpur bench consisting of Justice Bhushan Gavai and Justice C V Bhadang decided to refrain from making any observation about correctness of the method, the procedure adopted for collecting samples, its preparation and the final analysis, due to complicated facts unveiled during the hearings, raising a question mark over everything.
The High Court came down heavily on MahaGenco for turning the PIL into adversarial litigation by blaming WCL for supplying sub-standard coal and creating an impression that due to poor quality coal supplied by CIL and its subsidiaries like WCL, power generation was affected and seriously impacted environment.
The court was persuaded to pass an order directing sampling at loading and unloading point by the CMIFR. The court expressed deep anguish that precious public money was spent for this exercise.
MahaGenco paid Rs 1.25 lakh per sample to the CMIFR, while the WCL claimed that Coal Controller Organisation (CCO) which is the statutory authority does the same test for merely Rs 2,500, while other accredited agencies conduct the sampling test for merely Rs 950 to Rs 1,250 per sample.
