Coal scam: Court tells CBI to record Manmohan Singh's statement

Rejects CBI's closure report in allotment of a coal block to Hindalco

Months after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was pulled up for dropping the case involving Aditya Birla group chairman  Kumar Mangalam Birla in an alleged coal block allocation scam by a special court, the case has taken a new turn as the agency is set to record the statement of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the court’s direction.

"I desire that statements of then coal minister (Manmohan Singh) be recorded," Special Judge Bharat Parashar told the CBI.

The Special Judge told the investigative agency to further investigate into the matter and asked the CBI to file a status report on January 27.

This comes after the special court, on November 25, came down heavily on the CBI for not questioning Singh, who had additional charge of the coal portfolio in 2005 when he had approved coal blocks jointly allocated to an Aditya Birla group firm. The CBI had told the court that it was not permitted to examine him.

Singh had said last year that he is ready to be questioned by the CBI. "I am not above the law of the land. If there is anything that the CBI, or for that matter anyone, wants to ask, I have nothing to hide," Singh reportedly told the media while returning from Moscow and Beijing in October last year.

The case relates to the allocation of Talabira-II and -III coal blocks jointly to Hindalco Industries (an Aditya Birla Group company) and with two other firms in Odisha’s Jharsuguda district in 2005. CBI had booked Birla (then non-executive chairman of Hindalco), P C Parakh (then coal secretary) and other Hindalco officials under various sections, including criminal conspiracy and criminal misconduct on the part of government officials.

Parakh had said last September that if he is being questioned then Singh should also be among those to be quizzed by the CBI. He had also held Singh responsible for the coal block allocation scam.  “I do not know whey the prime minister did not speak then. But if the PM persisted, Coalgate would not have happened,” Parakh had said at an even in April this year.

On September 12, the CBI court had questioned the agency for closing the case against Birla, Parakh and others. Judge Bharat Parashar had said: “What was the hurry to close this case?”

The CBI had then submitted a “detailed and comprehensive” revised closure report in the court and based on this, the Supreme Court-appointed special public prosecutor R S Cheema had said that there is enough evidence to “take cognisance of various offences.”

The first information report against Birla, Parakh and others had been registered last year and CBI had alleged Parakh had shown “undue favours” to Hindalco by reversing within months his decision to reject the coal block allocation to the firm “without any valid basis or change in circumstances”