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Coal minister reviews coal scam files availability

September 5: Union Coal Minister Shriprakash Jaiswal on September 5 held a detailed review of the availability of coal blocks allocation files at a meeting with senior officials in the Ministries of Coal, Power, Steel Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, the Chairman of Coal India, and the CMD of CMPDIL.

The minister directed the officials to constitute teams in their respective ministries/departments to locate the relevant documents /files at the earliest.

He also directed them to make an all-out effort to locate these documents to facilitate the ongoing investigations into the coal scam. He said the weekend holidays should be utilised for this purpose.

He directed Secretary (Coal) to review the matter on September 10.

The minister had earlier constituted an inter-ministerial committee (IMG) under the chairmanship of the Additional Secretary (Coal) to locate the documents requisitioned by the Central Bureau of Investigations.

The ministry has also set up five search teams, including those for Coal India (Kolkata and Delhi) and CMPDIL (Ranchi).

The Supreme Court, on August, 29, 2013, had directed the CBI to furnish a comprehensive list of documents/files/information which are yet to be received from the government and had given two weeks to the government to make available the requisitioned documents. The lists of these documents have been given to the Ministry of Coal by CBI on September 2 and 4, 2013.