The Supreme Court today raised doubts over the Centre’s authority to allocate coal blocks, pointing out that coal was a state resource under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 and as such only the states had the power to execute mining leases.

A Bench comprising Justices RM Lodha and J Chelameswar said that since both the MMDR Act and the Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Act 1973 had not vested any power with the Centre to allocate coal blocks, it could not have undertaken this exercise.