No plans of selling SCCL, clarifies Centre

Hyderabad: The war of words between the leaders of ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi and the Bharatiya Janata Party over the paddy and other issues refuses to die down any soon. While the TRS has been targeting the BJP leaders for insulting the people of Telangana, the BJP leaders, on the other hand, termed them as lies.

Both the party leaders have been at loggerheads ever since the results of the Huzurabad bypoll. While the TRS led by its president and Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has been vocal against the BJP leadership on various issues, particularly the paddy procurement, the BJP leaders, including State unit president Bandi Sanjay Kumar has been countering the allegations of the ruling party in the State.

After meeting Piyush Goyal, Union Minister for Food and Civil Supplies recently in New Delhi, the State Ministers alleged that Goyal insulted the farmers and people of Telangana by asking them to serve broken rice to the people. Countering the statements of State Ministers, the BJP leaders stated that the Ministers were speaking all lies and raking up regional sentiments to divert the attention of people from the hike in electricity and RTC fares.

After the TRS leaders targeted the Centre on privatisation of Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL), the State BJP leaders received a statement from Union Coal Minister Pralhad Joshi denying any such move. Joshi stated that Singareni has joint ownership of the government of Telangana and the Government of India on a 51:49 equity basis and no decision on Singareni can be taken by the Centre singlehandedly without deliberating with the Telangana government as it holds the majority share. "As of now, there is no proposal for privatisation of Singareni. The auction of coal blocks situated in the command area of SCCL through public auction should not be construed as privatisation of Singareni," said Joshi.

Regarding the auction of four blocks, the Minister informed that the auction was being carried out under the provisions of Mines and Mineral (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 and Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act, 2015. Both these Acts provide for a transparent mechanism of mine allocation. The two modes of allocation are through public auction and through the allotment route. Mine allocation through auction invites highly competitive bids paving the way for higher revenue generation for the State governments. The auction mechanism is open to both private companies as well as public sector undertakings. There is no restriction on any public sector undertaking from participation in the auction of mines that may be located in any State or command area of any coal company.

The Union Minister said that the four coal blocks in the SCCL command area were still not taken by any bidder through the auction process. So SCCL still has the opportunity to bid for those blocks in the auction. SCCL should actively consider participating in public auction of mines to expand its coal reserves not only in Telangana/command area of SCCL but also across all other coal-bearing States as well, said the Minister.