CBI to seek govt nod to quiz ex-coal secy Balakrishnan

After being denied approval to question former coal secretary Harish Chandra Gupta,the CBI is understood to be in the process of seeking permission

After being denied approval to question former coal secretary Harish Chandra Gupta,the CBI is understood to be in the process of seeking permission from the government to quiz his successor on alleged irregularities in coal block allocations during 2006-09. While,the investigating agency is now preparing to re-seek permission to quiz Gupta,a 1971 batch IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre,it is also set to ask for approval to question former coal secretary C Balakrishnan.

Concerned,coal ministry officials,however,argued that it remains unclear as to how these officers influenced the allocation process. The ministrys discomfort has been mounting as two of its former ministers Santosh Bagrodia and D Narayan Rao have already been questioned by the agency.

It is a common knowledge that the allocations were decided by the screening committee route where representatives from other ministries used to be present. So to allege that a coal secretary facilitated any irregularity seems to be unfair, a coal ministry source said. The ministry is already reeling under an observation of the Supreme Court where it has cast aspersions on a serving joint secretary AK Bhalla for getting access to the CBIs draft status report.

After having registered 11 FIRs related to the alleged irregularities in the allocations of coal blocks,the agency is looking for further leads on the functioning of the screening committees and that is why it has sought paving the way for quizzing the two former secretaries,the source said.

While Gupta had chaired the committees meetings during his tenure,Balakrishnan did not chair any such meeting,but around 28 letters of allocations is learnt to have been issued during his tenure in 2009. The CBI is understood to have prepared a detailed case against the impartiality of the screening committee allocations and it trying to conclude that allocations from 1993 to 2010 were unauthorised and illegal. The official said that it appears that the CBI is trying to establish that the screening committee route was the most non-transparent procedure adopted from 1993 to 2010 for allocation of coal blocks. But even a parliamentary panel in its recent report has alleged that several blocks were allocated to few fortunates without disclosing the same to the public at large. The agency is also probing whether certain files pertaining to its inquiry is missing from the coal ministry,even the ministry,says that it has shared over 750 files so far.