Coal mining in India

Here an article I found on "Telegraph" (UK) website:

Indian government accused of 'looting the country' over coal mining contracts

India's Congress-led government was yesterday accused of "looting the country" after a leaked report claimed it had lost $210bn (£133bn) by awarding coal mining contracts to hand-picked companies.

By Dean Nelson, New Delhi
4:36PM GMT 22 Mar 2012

The disclosure by the country's Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) office caused uproar among MPs who called on Dr Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, to explain why the government had "favoured" certain companies in 155 coal fields.

Opposition MPs decried the waste of precious natural assets which they said should be for the benefit of the nation rather than corporate favourites.

$210bn is more than enough to feed every one of the 354 million people living under the poverty line in India for three years, according to government poverty figures released earlier this week.

Anti-graft campaigners said the scale of waste in this latest controversy indicated that a series of corruption scandals in the last two years had been just the "tip of the iceberg".

Several senior government figures, including former Telecoms minister A Raja and the head of Delhi's 2010 Commonwealth Games organising committee, have been jailed on corruption charges along with a leader of one of the government's key coalition partners.

Several top companies have had their contracts to operate 2G mobile phone networks cancelled following allegations that several were awarded fraudulently and that the government had lost $38bn in revenues because the licenses were give away too cheaply.

The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party's Prakash Javdekar said the government would not be allowed to continue "looting the country"," while a leading Communist Party of India figure, D Raja, said the latest scandal showed the Congress-led coalition was "favouring all corporate houses and big business houses in the country".

Manish Sisodia, a leader of the India Against Corruption campaign group, said Indians should rise up and demand tougher anti-graft laws.

"The gravity of these scams and frequency with which they are being exposed makes one realise that all these scams so far were just tip of the ice berg," he said.

India needs a powerful Lokpal, or independent ombudsman, to "stop the ruling class from looting public money," he added.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who oversaw the coal ministry during some of the period covered by the report, made no comment during his appearance in parliament on Thursday.

The prime minister's office called the estimated loss "exceedingly misleading".

The Comptroller and Auditor General's draft report, which was leaked to the Times of India, strongly criticised the government for failing to get the best return for India's people.

"Every action/decision of the State or its agencies/instrumentalities to give largesse/confer benefits must be sound, transparent, discernible and well defined policy. the natural resources cannot be allocated to private hands without ensuring that the benefit of low cost of the natural resources would be passed on to the citizens," it stated.

Following the outcry over its report, the Comptroller and Auditor General said the figures for the projected loss to the government had yet to be finalised and that the leaked report is a very preliminary draft. The Coal Ministry denied there had been any wrongdoing.