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Court indicts PMO officials for hiding facts in coal block case

A Special court here dealing with coal block allocation scam cases on Monday indicted the then Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) officials for hiding facts on the allocation of a coal block to a private company in Maharashtra.

Special Judge Bharat Parashar put the officials in the dock while considering a charge-sheet in connection with the allocation of “Lohara (East) Coal Block” to Messrs Grace Industries Limited allegedly in an illegal manner.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has charge-sheeted only one director of the company. It has given a clean chit to the other director and the public servants involved in the allocation of the coal block to the company.

Referring to the specific opinion by the then Minister of State of Coal, Dasari Narayan Rao, that GIL was not ‘eligible’ for allocation of the coal block applied for, the judge said that “the PMO officials should have highlighted the same before the file was submitted to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh”.

The PM was at that time also holding the additional charge of the Ministry.

“…I am constrained to observe that even the working of the officers of the PMO also does not appear to be above board,’’ the judge said

“Cognisance of the aforesaid offences thus needs to be taken including that of the offence of criminal conspiracy against the public servants (H C Gupta, Secretary, Coal, K S Kropha, Joint Secretary, Coal, and Vishwas Sawakhande, Director, Directorate of Geology and Mining, Government of Maharashtra. At the same time the private parties involved in the process i.e. M/s GIL and its two directors, Mukesh Gupta and his wife Seema Gupta, cheated the Government of India by making false claims regarding net worth of the company and its installed capacity so as to obtain wrongful gain i.e. seeking allotment of the coal block,” the judge said.

The court also ordered the CBI to further investigate the case.

Source: The Hindu