Present BJP MlA Dilip Ray, who then as a BJD MP was Union Minister of State for Coal in the NDA Government in 1999, has been summoned as an accused along with five others in connection with a coal block allocation case by a Special Court here.
Ray is the first Minister of the then NDA Government who has been summoned as an accused in a coal scam case.
Besides Ray, the court has also summoned Pradip Kumar Banerjee, who was the then Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Coal (MoC), Nitya Nand Gautam, who was the Advisor (Projects) in the MOC, the Castron Technologies ltd, its director Mahendra Kumar Agarwalla and Castron Mining as accused in the case.
The case pertains to the alleged irregularities in the allocation of the Brahmadiha coal block in Giridih in Jharkhand to Castron Technologies ltd in 1999.
Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar summoned these four persons and the two firms for the alleged offences under Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating) and 409 (Criminal breach of trust) of IPC and under the relevant provisions of the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act.
The court has directed them to appear before it on February 26.
The court summoned the accused after taking cognisance of the CBI’s chargesheet filed against them in the case.
In its order, the court said there is “prima facie” enough evidence to summon them as accused in the case.
“The public servants, in fact, actively connived with private parties involved so as to facilitate misappropriation of nationalised natural resources of the country by them,” the judge said in his order.
Dilip Ray, on the other hand, alleged that he smells a political conspiracy behind the court summons. He said he had no role in the allocation of the coal block to the Castron Technologies.
“The Screening Committee had denied the coal block to the Castron Technologies on safety ground. As a Union Minister, I had written to the Screening Committee chief just to reexamine,” said Ray.
“It is a normal practice. Whenever a letter or memorandum comes to a Minister, he sends the same to the concerned authorities for reconsideration and reexamination. Here, I even did not write the word ‘reconsider’,” added Ray.