To fight cases against issues pertaining mining scam and other litigations in the court, the Steel and Mines Department has paid Rs1,26,03,800 to lawyers in the last five years. The information was revealed to an RTI query filed by activist Pradip Pradhan.
Seeking information about the expenses incurred on lawyers fees and the record of cases represented by them, Pradhan had filed an RTI query. Replying to the query, the Steel and Mines Department Public Information Officer (PIO) said, the department has paid Rs1,26,03,800 to 10 lawyers to represent them in the court of law between 2009-10 and 2014-15 financial year.
Supreme Court lawyer KK Venugopal was paid with Rs15.40 lakh between 2009-10 and 2011-12, Srikant Nayak was paid Rs10.48 lakh between 2009-10 and 2012-13, Anidya Kumar Mitra, SK Dutta and S Giri were paid Rs14 lakh between 2009-10 and 2010-11, R Ramachandra was paid Rs7.35 lakh between 2010-11 and 2012-13, Mukul Rahatogi was given Rs25 lakh between 2010-11 and 2011-12, l Nageswar Rao was given Rs93 lakh between 2012-13 and 2013-14, while Dipankar Gupta was given Rs6 lakh in 2012-13 FY and AH Desai was given Rs38.509 lakh between 2012-13 and 2014-15 financial year, respectively.
“RTI application was submitted to different Government departments seeking information about details of budgetary provisions made each year to fight the cases in courts and lawyers fees paid to different lawyers etc. from 2009-10 to 2014-15. The PIOs of different departments have not provided me complete information as yet despite the expiry of the deadline,” said Pradhan.