SC stays summons to Manmohan Singh, KM Birla, PC Parakh

The former PM had last week challenged the summons issued by a CBI court asking him to appear as an accused

The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed the order of the special court, trying the coal blocks scam cases, which summoned former prime minister Manmohan Singh, industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla, former coal secretary P C Parakh and three others.

A Bench headed by Justice V Gopala Gowda also issued notices to the government and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to reply to the six appeals within four weeks.

The trail court had issued summons on March 11 for them to appear before it on April 4. They were suspected of breach of trust and criminal conspiracy in allotting the Talbira-II coal block in Odisha to a joint venture of Hindalco.

Singh’s counsel, Kapil Sibal, said the Supreme Court had cancelled all coal block allocations on the ground that the screening committee did not follow any procedure. If that was so, Singh could not be blamed for not following the screening committee recommendations, as alleged by the trial court. Moreover, there was no sanction to prosecute Singh, who was also coal minister at the relevant time. He followed the principles of federal structure by honouring the request of the Odisha chief minister for allocation of the coal block.

Singh and others are accused under the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Indian Penal Code for causing losses to the exchequer. Top lawyers Abhishek Singhvi and Aswini Kumar argued for other persons for half an hour  in a jam-packed court.

In his petition, Singh has argued that an administrative decision could be “good or bad” but it was ridiculous to slap criminality to the decision by alleging that it was against public interest and caused loss of revenue to the exchequer. A writ petition has also been moved challenging Section 13(1)(d)(iii) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

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Singh had sought quashing of the summons issued to him to appear as an accused on April 8 by special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Judge Bharat Parashar on the ground that the order was passed without application of mind.

“There is complete non-application of mind,” the petition said about the March 11 order.

The special court had earlier quashed CBI’s closure report in the case and had sought a fresh probe, examining Singh, the then principal secretary, T K A Nair and the then private secretary to the PM, B V R Subramanyam.

"I have always said I am open for legal scrutiny...I am sure the truth will prevail and I will get a chance to put forward my case with all the facts," Singh had said at the time of the issue of the summons.