A political dust storm over the Singareni coal mines

Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL), the 140-year-old State Public Sector Undertaking in Telangana has been in news for all wrong reasons in the recent weeks, with the Opposition Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and the ruling Congress sparring over alleged irregularities in tenders for removal of overburden (the layer of soil, rock, and ecosystem that lies above a coal seam) in the coal mines.

The ruling party has been forced on the back foot by the BRS, with the ruling party lacking punch in its rebuttal. The BRS has alleged that the tender norms were framed in favour of Congress bigwigs and their kin, helping them make easy money and causing loss to the company.

Also read | Harish Rao alleges more scams in Singareni, demands judicial or CBI probe

Buoyed by the encouraging results in the Gram Panchayat elections held in December last year, the BRS has added a pinch of aggression in targeting the ruling party. The Congress claimed that candidates backed by it won about 60% of the 12,733 Sarpanch posts, which is seen by the Opposition as an underperformance for a ruling party. The BRS claimed over 40% success rate in the Gram Panchayat polls held on non-party basis. The BRS has sharpened its attack on the Congress at every given opportunity in a bid to consolidate its position further in the upcoming election to urban local bodies (ULB), which is fought on party symbols.

The row over the Singareni tenders erupted when senior BRS leader and former Minister T. Harish Rao piled the allegations of irregularities on January 19. The BRS’s main target in the matter is not Deputy Chief Minister M. Bhatti Vikramarka, who handles the portfolio of Energy under which the SCCL operates. Rather, it is Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy. The party says the Chief Minister got the ‘site visit certification’ system introduced in the tenders with a view to favour his brother-in-law (wife’s brother) S. Srujan Reddy’s companies, with bids quoted at a value much higher than the estimates prepared by the company.

Also read | Singareni workers’ welfare top priority of govt.: Bhatti

Soon after the BRS raised the allegations, Mr. Harish Rao and party working president K.T. Rama Rao received notices from the special investigation team (SIT) in the phone-tapping case, asking them to appear before it for examination as witnesses. The Opposition party wasted no time in playing the victim card, alleging that the leaders were served notices as part of the ruling party’s plans to harass them for making ‘the scam’ public. As if to bolster its claim, another party leader and former senior police officer R.S. Praveen Kumar too received a notice from the SIT in the same case, a day after he questioned the morality of the SIT chief holding the position.

In a vain bid, Deputy Chief Minister Vikramarka tried to rebut the allegations, stating that the norm/condition of site visit certification was in practice in many Central PSUs, Departments and PSUs of other States and that in SCCL too, it was introduced in 2018 when the BRS was in power. He also read out some documents which impose the site visit condition as an attempt to turn the tables on the Opposition party. However, the BRS took it as another opportunity to corner the ruling party.

“The Deputy CM too appears to have taken a cue from the Chief Minister who had conveniently read out portions of irrigation documents to suit/support his argument in the Assembly on more than one occasion. Mr. Vikramarka read out only the portions that were convenient for him to do some mudslinging on the Opposition and did nottell people the fact that the site visit condition introduced by SCCL when the BRS was in power was only for establishing coal handling plants (CHPs) and not for the overburden removal contracts,” Mr. Harish Rao said. He stated that some of the examples of site visit condition for tenders cited by Mr. Vikramarka were strange as, for instance, the Ministry of Defence’s tenders were for supply of washing machines and dryers for Sainik Schools.

The BRS claims the site visit condition for overburden removal contracts was introduced as recently as May 2025 and some of the tenders finalised till that time from December 2023, when the Congress assumed office, were as per the old procedures without the site visit condition. Those tenders were locked for lower values/rates than the estimates prepared by SCCL, saving money for the company, it says.

The BRS is of the view that all the overburden removal contracts given after May 2025 merit cancellation on the same grounds on which the Naini mine development and operation (MDO) contract, which too had the condition of site visit, was cancelled. The party has demanded a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or any other Central agency or a sitting judge into the Singareni contracts, saying that a probe by a State agency would be unfair since the Chief Minister’s kin are the main beneficiaries.

It remains to be seen whether the government orders a probe into all the overburden removal contracts since June 2014, when the State of Telangana was formed, as it did in cases such as sinking of a portion of the Medigadda Barrage of Kaleshwaram project, power purchase from Chhattisgarh and execution of Yadadri Thermal Power Station, which is still in progress, to clear itself of the charges and fix the BRS instead by bringing out its misdeeds, if any.