The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked former prime minister Manmohan Singh to approach its special bench hearing coal scam cases to convince how his case was different and required to be heard separately.
“We will refer this to the coal bench and you go before that bench and convince them that this is not a coal matter,” Chief Justice of India H L Dattu told senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing Singh, who sought an early hearing of the appeal filed by the Rajya Sabha member.
The bench asked Sibal to put forth all the contentions before the three-judge bench, which is seized of all coal block allocation scam cases, after the lawyer argued that “this is the matter which is not entirely related to the coal allocation case.”
The bench initially said that the matter will be listed next week but minutes thereafter senior advocate Harish Salve urged the CJI to fix it for hearing after Diwali vacation. Salve was appearing for Aditya Birla Group flagship Hindalco, which was also summoned as a co-accused along with Singh in connection with alleged illegalities in allocation of the Talabira-II coal block in Orissa to Hindalco. Senior advocate K K Venugopal appeared for former minister of state for coal Santosh Bagrodia, who is an accused in another coal scam case.
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