Plea against coal allocation estimate dismissed

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a PIL questioning the procedure adopted by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) to arrive at the loss figure of Rs 1.86 lakh crore in coal block allocations.

A bench of Justices R M Lodha and A R Dave refused to entertain the plea made by one Bennet Castelino, a private person, saying that the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) would examine the CAG report. The court said “a challenge to the CAG report on diverse grounds does not fall within the domain of judicial review.
“The CAG would be quizzed by the PAC. He will have to justify his figure. PAC may accept his view or not,” the Bench added.

Castelino submitted that the computation by the CAG was fundamentally wrong as under the Companies Act, he could audit only government companies and not private companies.