Coal news and updates

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) today told the Supreme Court that it has completed investigations into allocations of coal blocks made when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was in charge of the coal ministry between 2006 and 2009. In a sealed report to the court, the CBI said it would file a charge-sheet soon.

The CBI told the Supreme Court that it has completed its probe into six FIRs, or police complaints, linked to allocations made when the PM held charge of the coal ministry.

16 FIRs have been filed so far in 'Coal-Gate', or the illegal allocation of coal mining blocks to private companies and those close to the Congress government.

In several of those allocations, "no criminality has been found", the investigating agency has said in its status report, according to sources.

But sources add that some of the key files from that period remain missing, a point on which the opposition has alleged a cover up at the highest level in the government.

The CBI is investigating 195 coal block allocations between 1993 and 2009.

The agency alleges that for several years, the government gave away mining licences arbitrarily, without a transparent bidding process, at the cost of thousands of crores to the country.

The Supreme Court had asked the CBI to probe all allotments made since 1993 and last week, it asked the Centre whether it can scrap some of these deals.

The coal controversy has seen the Opposition repeatedly demanding the Prime Minister's resignation. (read: 'PM uses silence as a weapon)

Last week, the Attorney General, speaking on behalf of the Centre, admitted for the first time that "something had gone wrong" in coal allocations. "We take decisions in good faith but somehow it goes wrong," Goolam Vahanvati told the top court, saying that the decisions were driven by the need to increase power generation at the time. (read)

The BJP then said such an admission makes it incumbent upon the PM to volunteer himself for CBI questioning.

 

Source: http://www.ndtv.com/