“The government’s response to the court attempts to paint a picture that all is well in the coal sector and now the blocks will be quickly auctioned. The SC has already deemed all coal block allocations illegal and has made it clear that it will not tolerate any further discrepancies. The NDA government will now need to follow a transparent and legally upright auction process to access coal and this is certainly a signal that they cannot further ignore forest rights and other important environmental legislations,” says Vinuta Gopal, climate and energy campaigner, Greenpeace India.
She adds: “This is certainly an end to cheap coal which skewed energy planning in India towards unsustainable and dirty coal-based power at the cost of crores of public money.”
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