New Delhi: In its judgment to give a clean chit to the former senior civil servants of the Ministry of Coal, the trial court gave the green signal to some “strange” trends in connection with the investigation conducted by the Central Bureau of Investments Bureau (CBI) in several cases related to the alleged coal block allocation scam.
Judge Sanjay Bansal of additional sessions questioned the selective approach of the CBI in considering the evidence, questioned for taking two views on the minutes prepared during the three screening committee meetings, which recommended the allocation of coal blocks to the applicant companies.
Meetings of the 34th, 35th and 36th screening committee were held between September and October 2006, and all the allocation she cleared came under the CBI scanner following a Supreme Court decision, which at that time canceled mining leases that did not follow guidelines at that time.
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In some cases, where the CBI also nominated public servants as accused and called for allegations under the prevention of the Corruption Act, the CBI claimed that the minutes were wrongly recorded. However, in other cases, where only private companies were accused of cheating, otherwise it was said.
Talking about the end of his 100-prince’s decision, Asj Bansal called the CBI’s approach “completely insertable”.
Similarly, the court also explained non-scrubbane/non-non-procession applications as a major lapse from the accused, where folk servants have been named and companies have failed to provide complete information about their assets.
However, where only private companies are being prosecuted, the CBI has remained silent about this alleged lapse, as according to the agency in the court, the companies presented full details about themselves.
Asj Bansal was dealing with the matter related to the allocation of coal blocks to M/S Kohinoor Steel Private Limited (M/S KSPL) in Medinirai Coal Block of Jharkhand. He discharged former coal secretary HC Gupta and Joint Secretary KS Cropha, who, he did not commit any crime under the prevention of the Corruption Act.
As the head of the 34th screening committee, who approved the application of M/S KSPL for the allocation of coal blocks, Gupta faced several allegations, one of them with non-scrutinous/non-non-inferior of applications in the said case.
He is called as administrative laps, the judge said that they cannot be equal with criminal liability. In addition, an inappropriate execution of a public duty is a crime under the anti -corruption law if it is committed for a reward, which was missing in the current case.
“A very strange tendency has been observed by this court. It is clear that non-scrutiny/non-gan of applications has been exposed as a major lapse from the accused folk servants, in which the public servants in those cases have been charged as the current case (M/S KSPL),” the judge said.
Referring to another case, where private company M/s SKS ISPAT and Power Limited are the only accused, the judge said that non-commentary of non-sex or applications was completely ignored. And, this aspect, he said, is present in all cases where only private parties are facing allegations only.
This variance, the court said, even though two cases related to the allocation of coal blocks were cleaned simultaneously in the meeting of the 34th Screening Committee held on 22 September 2006. Both were applicants for M/S KSPL and M/SK Sponge Iron Plant and the Administrative Ministry for both was the Steel Ministry.
In both cases, the judge said, the CBI referred to the same office note. However, in the case of M/s SKS ISPAT, nothing has been reported adverse against the accused folk servants. Instead, the agency has accused the private company of motivating the same folk servants – Gupta and Crop – who were charged in the M/S KSPL case.
Asked to explain this, the CBI said that because it was found that documents were attached to the M/S KSPL application, while in the case of M/S SKS Ispat, the documents were found to be complete.
However, the court, the court noticed: “was common for both non-scrubbane/non-non-tingal applications, but the CBI adopted a selective approach. It was only because the document and one case the application in one case was found to be incomplete, while in the other, they were found to be full.”
It further states: “The same minutes of the meeting are wrongly recorded in one case i.e. the current case (of M/S KSPL) while it is dependent on the same minutes that the applicant is completely unacceptable to consider the information supplied by the company in another case i.e. SKS ISPAT. It is completely unacceptable. It is completely unacceptable.”
ASJ Bansal said that either non-scrubbing/non-tanning application should be taken adversely or completely ignored in non-provocative cases.
The court said, “The fate of the accused folk servants may not be on a chance towards the completion of the completion or imperfection of the documents filed with the application,” the court said, he has also come under this variance in cases emerging from 35th and 36th screening committee meetings.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
Also read: Coal block allotment case: How the court junk every charge leveled by CBI 2 UPA-era officials