Coal scam: Nod to prosecute public servants awaited, says CBI

The CBI today told a special court that it has not received any information from authorities concerned on the issue of according sanction to prosecute two public servants allegedly involved in a coal scam case.

The prosecutor told special CBI judge Bharat Parashar that the agency had sent case files to the authorities in view of the court's November 12, 2014 order and the agency was waiting for their response.

"It has been submitted that no further information has yet been received from the competent authority regarding the issue of considering of according of sanction to prosecute public servants," the court said and fixed the matter for further proceedings on May 11.

The case pertains to alleged irregularities in allocation of coal block in Rampia in Odisha to Navbharat Power Pvt Ltd (NPPL).

During today's hearing, the agency moved an application saying that director of NPPL, K V B Reddy, has intimated that name of the company has since been changed to M/s Brahmani Thermal Power Pvt Ltd.

The court, in its November 12 order, had said that acts of former Coal Secretary H C Gupta and the then senior officials of the Ministry of Coal (MoC) in overlooking alleged misrepresentation by NPPL for acquiring coal block prima facie amounted to criminal misconduct.

The two public servants, against whom court had directed CBI to place records of the case before sanctioning authority for considering according sanction to prosecute them for the alleged offence under Prevention of Corruption Act, are K S Kropha, MoC's then Joint Secretary, and K C Samaria, the then Director.

In its order, the court had observed that while Gupta has retired, Kropha and Samaria are still in service and prior sanction was required to prosecute them.

CBI was earlier directed by the court to further probe the matter in which it had filed a charge sheet against NPPL, its Managing Director and Vice-Chairman Y Harish Chandra Prasad and Chairman P Trivikrama Prasad.

These eight individual accused were granted bail by the court after they had appeared before it in pursuance to the summons issued against them.

The court had yesterday heard arguments advanced by the counsel for the two IAS officers, Basu and Gupta where they contradicted each other over the issue of recommendation of coal block to VISUL.

While Basu denied making any recommendation for allocation of coal block to VISUL, Gupta had said there was a "strong recommendation" from him.

Seeking framing of charges against all the accused, R S Cheema, appointed by the apex court as Special Public Prosecutor in the case, had argued that there were specific acts of omission and commission of public servants involved in the case and there were specific acts that showed a "criminal conspiracy" was hatched by government officials and private parties.

Earlier, the court while granting bail to the eight individual accused had observed that Koda and others holding high positions allegedly misappropriated the natural resource.

They were summoned as accused after the court had taken cognisance of the offences under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) read with 420 (cheating) and 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servants) of the IPC and under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

Out of these accused persons, CBI had not chargesheeted Navin Kumar Tulsyan saying no prosecutable evidence could come on record during the course of investigation.

However, the court had summoned him as an accused saying that being a chartered accountant, Navin allegedly gave a false certificate to facilitate VISUL to misrepresent its net worth and turn-over to acquire the coal block.

CBI, in its charge sheet, had said that VISUL had applied for allocation of Rajhara North coal block on January 8, 2007 to the Ministry of Coal.

CBI said although Jharkhand government and Steel Ministry did not recommend the case of VISUL for the coal block allocation, the 36th Screening Committee recommended the block to the accused firm.