Coal block allocation corruption case: Chargesheet accuses ex-coal secy of misleading PMO, CBI court takes cognisance

Special Judge Sanjay Bansal took cognisance of the chargesheet filed on April 22 against Gupta and K S Kropha, both officers of the Ministry of Coal, and U N Jha, director at Contisteel.

The CBI had initially filed a chargesheet that was considered by the court and the judge made certain observations regarding shortcomings in the final report. The CBI then filed a supplementary chargesheet on December 24, 2021.

The CBI had told the court that Gupta who was then the chairman of the 36th Screening Committee had informed the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister that “all the proposals are based strictly on the merits of applicants, including the recommendations of the state governments where the blocks are located”.

The CBI said that “whereas, in the instant case, state government of Jharkhand had not recommended the name of Contisteel Ltd for Hurilong & Hutar Sector-C coal block. Therefore, H C Gupta misled the PMO in the matter”.

The CBI said that Gupta “did not follow the guidelines of the Ministry of Coal for the allocation of the coal block” and “deliberately overlooked the apparent discrepancies and change in the application format to favour Contisteel”.

On KS Kropha, the Joint Secretary (Coal) of the screening committee, the CBI said, “the minutes of the 36th Screening Committee meeting prepared under his supervision are completely silent on the manner in which guidelines were followed”.

The CBI said nothing is clear about what procedure was followed to ascertain on what basis the coal block allocation priority was given to one company over another.

In this case, the sanction to protect former coal ministry director KC Samria was declined. The court said that Samria, along with other officers of the ministry “not only had all the knowledge of the process by the time 36th Screening Committee meetings were held but they deliberately chose to ignore such violation of guidelines”.