GIL director granted bail in coal case

A court here on Friday granted bail to Gondwana Ispat Ltd (GIL) director Ashok Daga in a coal block allocation case.

Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Special Judge Bharat Parashar granted bail to Daga asking him to furnish a personal bond of Rs.1 lakh and surety of like amount.

He and his company were summoned last month as an accused in the case relating to alleged irregularities in allocation of Odisha's Majra coal block in 2003 and charged with criminal conspiracy and cheating.

In its charge sheet, the CBI said Daga had made "unsubstantiated claim even towards financial preparedness and tie up regarding iron ore with Odisha government".

It has alleged that as the coal ministry was not following any system of checking falsity of information provided by an applicant company, GIL and Daga in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy misrepresented to various government authorities and induced them to reserve or allocate Majra coal block in their favour.

The CBI has claimed that during probe it was found that though after allocation of the coal block in 2003, Daga had filed an undertaking with the ministry that he would install a plant or carry out its extension and develop the coal mine but sold off the company to Nand Kishore Sarda at a huge profit in October 2005.