Congress today suggested that the Supreme Court's order quashing coal block allocations since 1993 had proved hollow the campaign launched by BJP against the erstwhile UPA Government about corruption in the matter.
The cancellations of allocations since 1993 showed that it involved a long period involving several governments including those headed by the BJP, party spokesman Anand Sharma told reporters.
Noting that it was "nobody's case" that there was no mining, nor allocations during 1998 to 2004 when BJP was in power, he gave a word of advice to those in the government to reflect and introspect on how they had targeted the Congress and its coalition over alleged wrongdoing.
Sharma said the party has taken note of the apex court order which it will study and it was now for the government to implement it.
When told that BJP was saying its stand on "illegal" coal block allocations made during the previous UPA regime stood vindicated, Sharma said the ruling party should stop talking in an irresponsible manner.
He recalled that BJP used to say during campaigning that it will bring back black money stashed abroad within 100 days of coming to power at the Centre.
Now the talk has disappeared, and the Baba who was making the talk has also disappeared, he said in an apparent reference to Ramdev.
A senior party leader, who declined to be identified, said that the court order could create a huge mess in the energy sector which could lead to coal becoming more scarce and costly commodity and affect power generation.
It could also generate huge non-performing assets of public sector banks which had granted thousands of crores in loans to energy companies.
The Supreme Court today dealt a major blow to corporate sector by quashing the allocation of 214 out of 218 coal blocks that were alloted to various companies since 1993, in which it was claimed that around Rs 2 lakh crores were invested.
