Hyderabad: A coal block in Odisha’s Naini village for whose development and operation the Telangana government invited tenders has run into rough weather, with politics taking centre stage and ultimately leading to the tender notification being cancelled earlier last week.The controversy took several twists and turns until Union coal minister G. Kishan Reddy on Saturday (January 24) rushed to the state-owned Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL)’s premises in the coal town of Kothagudem for first-hand information. This was his maiden visit to the facilities of the SCCL, which was allotted the Naini coal block as a captive mine for its thermal power station near Jaipur in Telangana in 2015.Two days earlier, he had deputed two senior officials of his ministry – deputy director general Chetana Shukla and director (technical) M. Venkateswarlu – for an in-depth inquiry into the circumstances leading to the tender’s cancellation.The officials arrived at the SCCL headquarters here hours after the ministry’s orders were delivered and straightaway got down to their task, seeking production of all relevant files.Kishan Reddy’s visit raised apprehensions within SCCL circles over whether the Union government would take over management of the company amidst allegations of irregularities and many recommendations by New Delhi’s three nominees on its board of directors having been stonewalled by the six directors appointed by the state government, including the managing director, in the past.However, Kishan Reddy clarified that he travelled to the premises only to enquire. The Union government has no authority to take any action as it has a minority stake in the company, he said – control over the company’s management vests with the state government in light of its 51% stake as opposed to the Union government’s 49% share.In the run-up to the cancellation of the tender seeking a ‘mine developer and operator’ (MDO) issued through a notification in November and by fixing a deadline of January 29, Telangana’s three main political parties – the Congress, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and the BJP – and a couple of media houses were involved in unrestrained mudslinging.It started with a Telugu TV news channel playing up an alleged affair between a minister and a woman IAS officer in one of its programmes. Then, a Telugu daily alleged an ambition on the minister’s part to corner the Naini coal block for a firm owned by his younger brother that has wide experience in coal mining. The news was published in the newspaper’s Sunday column.To counter the minister, the daily reported that deputy chief minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, who holds the power portfolio, threw his weight behind the TV channel owner’s bid for the coal block’s MDO tender.It was also alleged that a firm owned by the channel owner’s son-in-law tied up with a major infrastructure company since neither the former nor relatives of Bhatti Vikramarka had experience in mining. The trio stepped in to scuttle the chances of the minister beleaguered in the first instance by the TV news, the daily alleged.In the midst of TV and newspaper reports, chief minister Revanth Reddy advised the two media houses’ managements at a public meeting in Mahbubnagar to settle their scores among themselves and not drag his ministerial colleagues into ‘needless’ controversies. At the same time, rumours circulated that some powerful political forces were behind the report that appeared in the newspaper with the aim to blame Bhatti Vikramarka.The newspaper further highlighted that the tender notification introduced a clause making it mandatory for bidders to visit the project site before making their bids. The visit must be certified by a general manager of the SCCL posted at Naini, the paper said, calling this requirement “silly” and alleging that it was introduced for the sake of favoured bidders.In the backdrop of allegations that surfaced against the ‘site visit’ clause, Bhatti Vikramarka announced the tender notification’s cancellation while insisting that he had no role in its introduction. The eligibility norms for participation in the tendering process were decided by the SCCL’s board of directors, he said.Even as the issue was on the boil, the BRS represented by former minister T. Harish Rao charged that the clause was aimed for the benefit of a brother-in-law of Revanth Reddy. He wrote a letter to Kishan Reddy demanding a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry, claiming that the site visit certification system had no precedent either in the history of SCCL or anywhere in the country.Harish Rao said all tenders for exploration of coal blocks in the country were awarded at prices 10% to 22% less than the quoted amount under the BRS, but that the Congress government on the other hand was giving them at prices that 7% to 10% more than the upset value after it assumed power.The tenders awarded under BRS rule were cancelled and given to relatives of Congress seniors, he alleged, adding that the first beneficiary among them was a brother-in-law of the chief minister.Denying Harish Rao’s allegation, Bhatti Vikramarka told a media conference on Saturday that the relative of the chief minister referred to by the former was none other than a son-in-law of a former BRS MLA.He asked Harish Rao where was the need for him to urge Kishan Reddy to order an inquiry. He said he would do it himself after Revanth Reddy returned from World Economic Forum meetings in Davos. He would seek an inquiry into all tenders of the SCCL ranging from BRS rule 12 years ago till date, the deputy CM said.As regards the newspaper report, Bhatti Vikramarka warned that the publication could not ‘indulge in reckless writing’ and get away with it.“All those responsible will stand scrutiny,” he said, accusing the paper of carrying out a campaign of falsehood against him.Bhatti Vikramarka said the site visit clause was made compulsory by Coal India Limited for all coal projects in the country on the basis of a tender document prepared by the Central Mining, Planning and Design Institute, a Mini Ratna company. The condition was also followed by the BRS government in its tendering processes for coal blocks in 2018, 2021 and 2023, he said.The deputy CM also distributed copies of tender documents of a dozen companies and institutions in the country, including the National Mineral Development Corporation, the railways, Hindustan Copper Limited, a Sainik School in Uttarakhand, IIT Jammu and IIM Bangalore to support his stance on the site visit clause.Reacting to allegations that the SCCL’s general manager at Naini did not issue certificates even though 17 bidders had visited the project site, Bhatti Vikramarka said the companies went there before the process of tendering was set in motion. Not even the pre-bid meetings or other formalities were conducted by then, he said.BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao alleged that the police summoned Harish Rao for questioning this week in connection with the phone tapping case against the party-led government solely because the latter had brought to light Revanth Reddy’s links with the Naini block’s tendering.After a meeting with SCCL officials led by chairman and managing director D. Krishna Bhaskar at Kothagudem late on Saturday night, Kishan Reddy admitted that the site visit certification process was followed in Coal India and other Union public sector undertakings to ensure that bidders did not face hardships in their operations after they won a contract. He promised a modification in the certification process after consulting the SCCL management.Harish Rao, who is also the deputy leader of the BRS in the state assembly, demanded cancellation of all tenders invited by the SCCL, alleging that the site visit system breeds corruption. He asked why the Naini block tender was cancelled if there had been no scam.Several overburden removal works were executed by the SCCL during the BRS government from 2018 to 2024 but none of them had the certification condition, he claimed.Earlier, Kishan Reddy had said both the Congress and the BRS were enacting a drama on the whole issue. He said the family of BRS president and former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao ran its writ on the SCCL’s affairs during the party’s ten-year rule and the Congress was towing the same line now.He also said the SCCL got all relevant clearances from the Union government in time after it was allotted the Naini coal block in 2015. However, persistent mismanagement by BRS and now the Congress had stalled progress, he alleged. The SCCL accumulated dues of Rs 47,000 crore from the state government during the BRS regime and a profit-making icon was now left to borrow even for staff salaries, he charged.Raisina Hill was ready to initiate a CBI inquiry into allegations of tender irregularities if the state government gave its consent, Kishan Reddy added.The tender notification envisaged the award of a contract to a prospective MDO for 25 years if it invested Rs 1,604.42 crore as working capital expenditure and produced one crore tonnes of coal every year for handing over to the SCCL.