CBI continues hunt for missing coal files

Says it only received information about available files, not the missing ones

Don't want to miss the best from Business Standard?

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)’s search for the missing files related to the coal allocation scam continues even after the coal ministry’s detailed response to the agency. It is learnt the CBI has received information only about “available files”; there are no details about the missing content.

The coal ministry is learnt to have informed the CBI that certain files remain untraceable. The investigation agency is now in the process of examining the report submitted by the ministry and matching it against its own requirement to proceed with the investigation.

No complaint has been registered yet in this regard, but action is likely to be taken according to the Supreme Court’s direction by the CBI. Recently, CBI Director Ranjit Sinha had said it would be difficult to file chargesheets in some of the coal cases if it did not get its hands on a few particular files.

The Supreme Court had on August 29 directed the CBI to furnish a comprehensive list of documents, which are yet to be received from the government. The apex court had asked the government to make the documents available in two weeks. That deadline ended on Tuesday. “We have been able to locate most of the documents that were missing,” said an official.

The CBI had, through Attorney-General (AG) Goolam E Vahanvati, provided a fresh list of documents to the ministry. The list contained outstanding papers yet to be furnished for the probe in alleged irregularities in coal block allocations between 1993 and 2009.

The new list contains 26 papers related to allocations for over two dozen companies including Tata Sponge Iron Ltd, Sunflag Iron and Steel, Adhunik Corp, Jharkhand Ispat, Rathi Steel & Power, Pushp Steel & Mining and Bhushan Power & Steel. The list also contains a recommendation letter from former Member of Parliament Vijay Darda, forwarded by the Prime Minister’s Office, for allocation of the Bander coal block to AMR Iron and Steel and a report of Coal India’s experts on the financial strength of applicant companies.

An inter-ministerial committee headed by the coal ministry’s additional secretary A K Dubey formed to locate missing documents earlier has met five times so far. In addition, multiple search committees with representatives from the power, coal, steel and commerce ministries have been searching for the documents over the past month.