PM reverses Soren orders on CBI action

The CBI had been informed that the Minister found ‘‘no merit’’ in the case.

It was reportedly the intervention of Coal Secretary P C Parakh which led to the file being routed again to Manmohan Singh, in his capacity as acting Coal Minister. CBI officials say that they were surprised when towards the end of March, they suddenly received sanction for prosecution from the Ministry and were informed that it was none other than the Prime Minister himself who decided that the case was fit for grant of sanction.

With the elusive sanction under their belt, the CBI included M K Thapar’s name in the list of Government officers subjected to search and seizure operations on April 6. Agency sources say the case will shortly be chargesheeted.

The case against Thapar goes back to the period when he was Chairman and Managing Director of the Central Coal Fields (CCL) in Ranchi.

He is presently the Chairman and Managing Director of the South Eastern Coal Fields, Limited, Bilaspur. Two other senior CCL officials have also been named by the CBI in the case, but no sanction for them was required since they have since retired.

The allegation they face is that they had ‘‘fraudulently and dishonestly’’ placed an order for transportation of 15 lakh metric tonnes of coal from the Jharkand Project of Hazaribagh to the Rujrappa washery of CLL to a private firm, Rungta Projects Limited, at an exorbitant rate.

The CBI had put the loss to the national exchequer at Rs 24.79 lakh but until the Prime Minister’s intervention, had put away the case in their list of ‘‘sanction denied’’ cases.