Coal news and updates

Coal scam: Court pulls up CBI for filing illegible documents

The CBI on Monday once again faced the ire of a Delhi court which pulled up the agency for not filing documents in sequence and in a legible condition in a coal blocks allocation case involving Kamal Sponge Steel and Power Ltd and others.

Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar asked the investigating officer (IO) to file complete documents in a legible condition along with a list of relevant documents on September 24.

The court also directed the IO to submit a short synopsis giving details of the documents filed and their relevance.

"This is ridiculous, no documents are in sequence," the judge said.

The court heard part arguments on the closure report filed by CBI in the FIR in which Kamal Sponge Steel and Power Ltd, its directors, Pavan Ahluwalia, Kamaljeet Ahluwalia, Prashant Ahluwalia, its senior official Amit Goyal and some unknown government servants were named as accused for allegedly misrepresenting facts, including inflated net worth, to acquire coal blocks.

During the hearing, the court raised questions over CBI filing closure report against the firm's chartered accountant Amit Goyal as he was the one who had appeared before the Screening Committee, which dealt with its application seeking allocation of coal blocks, on behalf of the company.

The court said one of the allegations against the firm and its directors was that they inflated the net worth to acquire coal blocks and Goyal had audited the company's balance sheet so he must be aware of the actual net worth.

"How can you leave Amit Goyal. He had appeared before the screening committee, he knew about the net worth of the company. No representation was made by the company before the screening committee, still it acquired the coal blocks," the court said.

Source: The Times of India