New Delhi: Law Minister Ashwani Kumar’s fate hung in balance as the Supreme Court takes on record tomorrow CBI affidavit on its status report on the coal blocks allocation scam that was shared with the minister and senior officials of PMO and Coal ministry.
Hectic consultations were on in the government involving top officials including legal experts on the stand to be taken during the court hearing tomorrow. Attorney General G E Vahanvati met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over the week.
There was no official word on what the two discussed but it is believed that they could have gone over what the government should say in the court, which already been conveyed what the agency wanted to say and what it finally said in the status report.
The CBI had submitted to the court last week the contents of its original investigation details along with the changes made in them.
The hearing by a three-judge bench assumes significance as any adverse remarks against the government or the Law Minister on the alleged interference in the preparation of the status quo hit the government could make Kumar’s continuance in the Cabinet might become untenable.
The opposition has been demanding the dismissal of Kumar and has alleged that he has been used as a “shield” by the prime minister to “safeguard” himself. The BJP has also demanded the prime minister’s resignation.
The bench headed by Justice R M Lodha will also go through the latest status report filed by the CBI in the multi-crore scam.
In an embarrassing admission, CBI Director Ranjit Sinha had last week filed an affidavit in the court saying that its probe report on coal allocation scam was shared with the Law Minister and Joint-Secretary level officials of PMO and Coal ministry.
The affidavit contradicted the claim made by Additional Solicitor General Haren Raval on behalf of CBI on March 12 that the probe report in the scam has not been shared with any member of the government and it has only been shared with the apex court after being vetted by the CBI director.
“I submit that the draft of the same (status report) was shared with Law Minister as desired by him prior to its submission before the Supreme Court. Besides the political executive, it was also shared with one joint secretary level officer each of Prime Minister’s Office and Ministry of Coal as desired by them,” the affidavit had said.
Sinha had also assured the apex court that the agency will not share further status reports in this case with any member of the political executive.
He also said that the latest status report being filed today has not been shared with any political executive in “any manner whatsoever”.
The affidavit was filed in compliance with the Supreme Court’s order which, in an unprecedented move on March 12, had directed the CBI director to assure the court that the status report in the coalgate scam is not being shared with the government. Sinha was directed him to file an affidavit in this regard.
Earlier, the CBI and the Centre had clashed over the coalgate scam. The agency had told the court that there have been “arbitrary allotments without scrutiny” in the coal blocks allocation during UPA-I tenure.
The government refuted its findings saying that the “CBI is not the final word on this.”
In the status report filed by CBI on March 8, the agency had said that the coal block allocation during 2006-09 was done without verifying the credentials of companies which allegedly misrepresented facts about themselves and no rationale was given by the Coal Ministry in giving coal blocks to them.
Meanwhile, in the affidavit filed by Ministry of Coal on April 23, it was stated that the minutes of the meeting of the screening committee does not record the entire deliberations in detail due to large number of representations made by the applicants for coal blocks allocation.
“Though the minutes of the meeting of the screening committee do not record the details of the exercise carried out by the committee, the position is discernible from the record,” it had said.
