Coal Allocation: The story behind
COAL ALLOCATION SCAM OR COALGATE SCANDAL: THE STORY BEHIND ITS NAME: There took place a political scandal In USA in the early 1970's named Watergate scandal which led to the resignation of Richard Nikson, the president of United States. The Watergate scandal involved the head of their country. In the same way, the coal allocation involves the head of our country. So it is named with a suffix 'gate'. INTRODUCTION TO THE SCANDAL: The coalgate is a political scandal concerning with the illegal allocation of coal blocks to the public and private companies without having an auction (regular process to allocate coal blocks) between 2006 and 2008. It led to the looting of 1.86 lakh crore approximately. The figure earlier was believed to be more than 10 lakh crore. But later on, the loss was estimated to be 1.86 lakh crore. The coal minister for 2004 was Shibu Soren, but when the discussions for competitive bidding just started, he had been forced to resign due to a...