Coal scam: Court to pass detailed order on sanction issue

A special court today said it would pass a "detailed order" on July 22 on the issue of grant of sanction by competent authority to prosecute two government servants for their alleged role in a coal block allocation scam case.
Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar said this after the agency said they had not yet received any communication from the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) on the sanction issue and the court should now proceed with an inference that sanction is deemed to have been granted.
CBI said they had sent relevant records of the case to DoPT in January this year for considering grant of sanction to prosecute K S Kropha, the then Joint Secretary in the Coal Ministry, and K C Samaria, then Director (Coal Allocation-I section) there, for alleged offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

It said as per the Supreme Court order, the court should infer that sanction is deemed to have been granted by competent authority as over four-and-a-half-month have elapsed since the case records were sent to it.
"I would be passing a detailed order on this issue. I will look into all the records and details of the case," the judge said and posted the matter for consideration on July 22.
The court would consider the CBI's final report on its further probe in the case pertaining to alleged irregularities in allocation of a Madhya Pradesh coal block to Kamal Sponge Steel and Power Ltd (KSSPL).

The court, in its order on October 13 last year, had noted that since Samaria and Kropha were still in government service, no cognizance of alleged offences under anti-graft law could be taken against them due to want of sanction.