Centre does volte-face on coal block auction, BRS to protest
Minister KT Rama Rao said the Centre was backtracking on its promise that the SCCL would not be privatized and that the fresh notification to auction coal blocks exposed the Centre’s conspiracy to hand over the SCCL to private players
Hyderabad: Barely days after it indicated to the Singareni Collieries Company Limited that it would hand over four coal blocks to the SCCL without auctioning them anymore, the Centre has done a volte-face and put up coal blocks from Telangana on auction again.
Taking strong objection to this, Industries Minister KT Rama Rao on Thursday said the Centre was backtracking on its promise that the SCCL would not be privatized and that the fresh notification to auction coal blocks exposed the Centre’s conspiracy to hand over the SCCL to private players. Demanding that the Centre withdraw its decision, the Minister has asked
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BRS leaders to stage widespread protests involving Singareni employees at Mancherial, Bhupalpally and Ramagundam against the Centre’s decision to auction the mines. He also spoke to BRS MLAs and leaders from the Singareni region.
“SCCL is like a socio-economic lifeline of Telangana. If the BJP government does not shelve its SCCL privatization plans, a massive people’s movement will be launched,” he said.
The Centre had in the past too made attempts to auction the coal blocks as part of its efforts to open up the country’s coal resources to commercial mining. However, the repeated attempts to auction the coal blocks in Telangana had found no takers, following which the Coal Ministry sent feelers to SCCL authorities that they would hand over the Kalyan Khani Block-6, Koyagudem Block-III, Sathupalli Block-III and Sravanapalli coal blocks to SCCL.
Rama Rao pointed out that the State had made several pleas to allocate Sathupalli Block 3, Sravanapalli and the Penugadappa coal blocks to the SCCL on nomination basis. Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao had also written to the Centre on this, he said, adding that however, blocks including Sravanapalli and Penugadappa were now put up for auction from March 29 to May 30.
The BJP-led Centre, by not allocating the mines directly, was planning to push SCCL into losses and then hand it over to private players. In Andhra Pradesh too, iron ore mines required for the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant were not provided, which led to losses for the plant, he pointed out, adding that a similar ploy was being adopted in Telangana.
“Telangana, which is known for its fighting spirit, will ensure that the BJP government will not succeed in its evil plans of privatizing the SCCL,” Rama Rao said. Asking the Centre why the coal mines were not allocated to SCCL directly as was done to in the case of allocating lignite mines to the Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation, Rama Rao said the Prime Minister was showering affection on his home State while discriminating towards Telangana, a progressive State.
Reminding Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise made to the people of Telangana during his visit to Ramagundam on November 12 last year, the Minister said the fresh notification for auctions had reaffirmed that those were just false assurances from Modi.
“What does the Prime Minister have to say about the fresh notification? Can any leader at the Centre explain the reasons for privatizing SCCL, which was setting new records in terms of production, profits and PLF?” he asked.
Wondering whether the Prime Minister had any clue that if a crisis broke out in the SCCL, there would be cascading impact on thermal power production in entire South India, the Minister said privatization of SCCL was not confined to just six districts in Telangana.
“It is a matter of the entire Telangana. All this is being done as part of a larger conspiracy to impact the economic growth of the State,” he said, adding that the Centre, with its politically motivated plans was trying to damage the Chief Minister’s will power in extending 24 hours of free power to farmers. All these attempts reflect the Centre’s ploys to push the farming community back into a crisis, he said, reminding that Telangana had strongly opposed the Centre’s power reforms and installation of meters for agricultural pumpsets.
More importantly, the BJP government was unable to stomach the world-wide recognition for the Telangana government for constructing the Kaleshwaram project. By hitting power production in the State, the BJP government was conspiring to affect power supply to lift irrigation projects as well, he said.
