The government on Friday assured the Lok Sabha that Coal India Ltd., would not be denationalised. “We are in fact strengthening it,” said Union Minister of State for Coal Piyush Goyal while steering The Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Bill, 2014, through the Lower House with a voice vote.

Though some Opposition parties made out a case for referring the Bill to the Departmental Standing Committee, their resistance to the draft legislation petered out by the time the discussion was wrapped up. The Opposition strategy appeared to be to force the Bill to a Select Committee in the Rajya Sabha, where it has the strength to do so; using the Lok Sabha merely to voice their reservations, particularly on the end use clause which has “left a door open for discretion.”

With the Opposition questioning the government’s haste in pushing the Bill without scrutiny, Mr. Goyal said such “alacrity” was needed owing to the Supreme Court order cancelling allocation of 204 coal blocks. “The government had to take the Ordinance route to address apprehensions of job losses and ensure power supply.” Dismissing the demand for referring the Bill to a Standing Committee, he said it essentially replaces the Ordinance which has been widely debated and ``no provision has been criticised in the public debate.”

Earlier, Jyotiraditya Scindia (Congress) and Kalyan Banerjee (Trinamool) pointed out that there was no provision in the Bill to improve the work conditions of coal miners. Mr. Scindia, a former Power Minister, said the government was wasting a “wonderful opportunity to recast the coal sector.” The Bill, he stressed, needed to meet certain objectives — reduce the coal deficit, and make the mining process more scientific and cost efficient. Pitching for a differential coal block allocation system, he said there should be a price ceiling and reverse auction for regulated entities, while for unregulated entities, the idea should be to maximise revenues through auction.

Mr. Bannerjee wanted to know why the Bill’s provisions did not include anything about how to strengthen Coal India and its subsidiaries took umbrage at the Minister suggesting that political parties should not oppose the Bill as States with mines would get money: “Mines are properties of States... You are not giving any charity... [You are] making money from State governments’ property....”

Tatagatha Satpathy (BJD) also made a similar point about the “belligerence with which a thought is being pushed forward that all regional parties and politicians should keep quiet primarily because the proceeds of the bids will go to State governments.”

He also described the definition of “end use” in the Bill as “suspicious” as it spoke of ‘any other use as specified by the Central government. This meant, he stressed, that “a huge door” was being kept open for “discretionary practices.”