Supreme Court appoints two judges to conduct trials in coal scam cases

The bench decided to appoint special judges to preside over two courts to deal with coal scam cases

The Supreme Court on Monday appointed Arun Bhardwaj and Sanjay Bansal as special judges to try 41 Coal block allocation scam cases here.

A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian passed an order in this regard on the basis of a letter received from the Registrar General of the Delhi High Court.

Special judge Bharat Parashar who presided over the court to try coal scam cases, has already completed six years on the post since his appointment on August 19, 2014.

Last month, the top court has asked the Chief Justice, Delhi High Court to send names of five judges high calibre and absolute integrity to suggest an appropriate replacement for judge Parashar.

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It had on March 15 said, "We find that Bharat Parashar who has acted as a Special Judge (PC Act), (CBI)-07, Patiala House Court, New Delhi, needs to be replaced, as he has now completed more than 6 years in the same post after having been posted as Special Judge in the above-mentioned court since 19.08.2014."

"We accordingly request the Chief Justice, Delhi High Court to give us a panel of names of about five judges of a high caliber and absolute integrity to enable us to suggest an appropriate replacement for Bharat Parashar, Special Judge," the bench had said.

The bench took note of the submission of special public prosecutor Cheema that the law contemplates the disposal of such cases has to be ensured in two years which may be extended up to four times by a period of six months each.

It had taken note of the fact that Parashar has been acting as the special judge since 2014 and his replacement is now needed and fixed the case after two weeks to consider the names to be provided by the Chief Justice of the High Court.

The top court in 2014 had quashed 214 coal blocks allocated by the Centre between 1993 and 2010 after taking note of PILs, including one filed by lawyer M L Sharma, and had ordered trial by a special CBI Judge.

With PTI inputs