Allot coal blocks to SCCL without auction, CPM demands Centre

The party workers staged a protest here on Friday objecting to the auctioning of Sravanapalli coal block in Mancherial district.

Khammam: The Central government led by BJP should stop the auction of coal mines and allocate them directly to SCCL, demanded CPM district secretary Nunna Nageswara Rao.

He said the Centre was forcing SCCL to compete with private companies in the auction and it could cause grave injustice to the people of Telangana. The party workers staged a protest here on Friday objecting to the auctioning of Sravanapalli coal block in Mancherial district.

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Nageswara Rao said that it was a shame that union Minister of Coal and Mines G Kishan Reddy of Telangana launched the auctioning process in Hyderabad. Despite the presence of eight BJP MPs from the State, they could not stop the auction of coal mines.

It was surprising to see that Deputy Chief Minister Bhatti Vikramarka participated in the auction launching event along with Kishan Reddy and it shows the State’s approval to the auctioning of mines, he noted.

The CPM leader wanted the State government to put pressure on the Centre by involving all political parties to hand over the blocks to Singareni along with the Sravanapalli block. The state Cabinet should take a decision and pass a resolution in the Assembly in that direction, otherwise large-scale agitations would be staged involving the public, he warned.

With privatisation, the Centre was trying to weaken Singareni. In the last ten years, the Central government has handed over nearly 200 coal mines to private companies harming the employment opportunities of youths.

If the coal mines were privatised the price of electricity would increase tremendously. The coal reserves in the 22 coal mines of SCCL have been diminishing but the BJP government was not allowing the company to explore new coal blocks, Nageswara Rao complained.