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SC relief for Naveen in Talabira coal block row

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a Special Leave Petition seeking summons to be issued to Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in the Talabira-II coal block row.

A two-member Bench comprising Justice V Gopal Gowda and Justice C Nagappan rejected the petition and imposed a penalty of Rs 1 lakh on the petitioner N K Sahoo, a Delhi-based lawyer, for filing a ‘frivolous and vexatious’ petition.

The petition, filed on March 11, said it was Patnaik's recommendation that swayed the coal ministry’s decision in favour of Aditya Birla Group’s Hindalco Industries even though the coal block was already allocated to public sector firm Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC), the petition said.

Suresh Tripathy, the petitioner's counsel, argued since six persons including former prime minister Manmohan Singh, former coal secretary P C Parakh and Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla had already been summoned in the case by a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court, there was no ground to exempt Patnaik from summons.

The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) here had also been raising the pitch for Patnaik's interrogation.

“As a probe agency, the CBI is free to interrogate anybody. But it is unfortunate that the CBI is yet to call the Odisha chief minister for interrogation. As far as the former Prime Minister is concerned, he has already clarified that he had taken steps to allot the Talabira coal block to Hindalco based on the recommendation of the state chief minister,” senior Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly Narasingha Mishra said recently. However, ruling Biju Janata dal (BJD) leader Amar Prasad Satapathy reasoned that recommending a coal block did not amount to offence.

“Recommending a coal block and taking a final decision on its allocation are separate issues. The responsibility of allocation rests with the final decision making authority. The former PM was also the coal minister and it was during his tenure that the Talabira coal block was allocated.”

Patnaik himself had trashed the charges of the Opposition, saying the order from the CBI court (on Talabira-II coal block allocation) had nothing to do with him.

Hindalco Industries was awarded the Talabira II coal mine in June 2005 jointly with NLC and Coal India subsidiary Mahanadi Coalfields (MCL) despite initial objections of Coal India (CIL) and then coal secretary Parakh.

The objection was based on the premise that Hindalco was already allotted a coal mine named Talabira I in 1993 for its captive power use.

However, during a screening committee meeting to finalise the allocation, the Odisha government supported allocation of the Talabira II mine in favour of Hindalco, saying it would mean large-scale employment generation for the state as the company would use coal for its aluminium smelting unit.

Source: Business Standard