The Supreme Court…cancelled all but four of the 218 coal block allocations it had declared illegal and arbitrary in its August 25, 2014 verdict…On the Centre's request to save 40 functional coal blocks and six ready-to-function ones, the court said 42 of them would continue to function for the next 6 months, till March 31, 2015, to give the government "breathing space to manage the emerging situation..The four functional coal blocks exempted from cancellation are two ultra mega power projects, one operated by NTPC and another by SAIL.