Examine the role of judicial intervention in reforming natural-resource allocation.

In September 2014 the Supreme Court declared all coal block allocations made since 1993 through the Screening Committee and government dispensation routes illegal, cancelling 204 of 218 blocks for want of objective criteria [1]. Judicial intervention has thus been decisive in shifting natural-resource allocation from executive discretion to a rule-based, competitive framework — though its reach ends at allocation, not at production.

Why intervention became necessary

• Regulatory vacuum: no criteria existed for allocating blocks for captive mining till 1993, and the transparency reform initiated in 2004 had still not materialised as of February 2012 [2].
• Scale of the loss: the CAG estimated a benefit of about Rs 1.86 lakh crore to private allottees from opencast mines, arising from the delay in introducing competitive bidding [2].
• 194 blocks holding 44,440 million tonnes of reserves were allotted without any competitive process up to March 2011 [2].

What the Court achieved

• Constitutional standard: by holding discretionary allocation arbitrary, the Court read Article 14 discipline into the distribution of public resources [1].
• Legislative follow-through: the cancellation forced the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act, 2015, providing a statutory auction route and compensation to prior allottees [1].
• Market institutionalisation: commercial mining auctions launched in 2020 [4] have since covered 125 mines (273.06 MTPA), realising about Rs 4,149.76 crore [3].

Limits of the judicial route

• Transparency in award has not translated into output: only 15 of 109 commercially auctioned mines are operational [3], as land acquisition, rehabilitation, forest and environmental clearances and law-and-order problems persist [5].
• PRS noted the 2015 law created no independent regulator and left land-acquisition delays untouched [1]; courts cannot supply such executive capacity.
• Cleaner allocation is still allocation of more coal — the climate and livelihood question now sits with NITI Aayog's Inter-Ministerial Committee on Just Transition from Coal [6].

Judicial review supplied the grammar of fairness; converting it into delivery requires an empowered single-window clearance mechanism and district-level transition planning, so that Article 14 in resource allocation also serves India's energy-security and climate commitments.