Supreme Court of India Supreme Court of India

In a setback to the the Centre, the Supreme Court Tuesday dismissed its petitions to get all the cases, pending before various high courts against the coal ordinance, transferred to the apex court.

The order virtually means that there would be no monitoring by the apex court on the auction process, which requires to be completed by April 1.

Further, court’s refusal to transfer the cases for delivering an authoritative judgment would mean the auction process may not remain unencumbered and free from conditions since high courts are at liberty to issue interim orders. A bench led by Chief Justice H L Dattu, while underlining that the cases sought to be transferred did not involve the same or similar questions of law, asked the government to contest these petitions first before the high courts.

The bench made it clear that all the parties, including prior allottees, licensee, lease holders as well as new entities which wanted to participate in the auction process, could, under the law, challenge the provisions of the ordinance and if they opt to do so, the Centre should justify its ordinance.

“The ordinance is your own making. You may have used expressions that are under challenge before the high courts now. We cannot stop a person or a party from moving the high court if they are aggrieved. It is a debatable issue as on today and if a party goes to the high court, you will have to defend it,” the bench told Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi.

Rohatgi sought to convince the bench that the entire itinerary of auction could go for a toss if the Supreme Court did not intervene and restrained different high courts across the country issue variety of orders.

“High Courts require to be told that nothing can be done by them that will upset the Supreme Court order. We have a deadline of April 1 to complete auction of more than 200 blocks. If every high court starts interpreting the ordinance and starts issuing ad interim orders on the first day of hearing, it would become unworkable for us,” said the AG. The bench however pointed out that the cases filed by the parties were on different issues and since they were debatable, a court of law may want to take a “second look” at the ordinance.

By this order, the bench refused to interfere with the high court orders involving BLA Power, Jindal Steel & Power Ltd (JSPL) and Sova Ispat. Of the five petitions sought to be transferred, two petitions each have been filed by JSPL and BLA in Delhi High Court and Madhya Pradesh High Court, respectively, while one petition by Sova Ispat is pending before the Calcutta High Court.

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