The BJD on Tuesday rubbished the petition filed by one Viabhav Verma in the Supreme Court on Monday seeking expediting the CBI probe in a coal block allocation case, in which an inquiry was pending against Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, and said Patnaik has no role to play in the case.
As per the petition, MS Central Collieries Co Limited and Ors (Nagpur) was awarded the Takli-Jena-Bellora coalfield in Maharashtra in 1998 even before its registration. Patnaik was the then Union Minister of Coal, thus making his role questionable. There’s no reason to delay the case, the petitioner stated, adding that Patnaik has already been interrogated by the CBI on November 25, 2017. As evident, again there is a delay of almost two years since his interrogation and the CBI is yet to complete its investigation and has failed to take any concrete steps despite the fact that the apex court is monitoring the coal block cases, the petitioner stated.
The case was registered on March 26, 2014; and the CBI investigation into the allocation of captive coalfields was part of Supreme Court-monitored probe between 1993 and 2010. The allegations in the case are those of forgery, criminal breach of trust and selling of coal in the open market against the concept of captive allocation of coal mines for a specified end-use product, stated the petitioner.
However, SC lawyer and BJD MP Pinaki Misra in reaction to the petition said, “It’s a contemptible move. The issue is 21 years old. It relates to a time when Naveen Patnaik was holding an additional charge of the Coal Ministry for about a couple of months only during the Vajpayee regime.”
He further said that the issue never came up when Patnaik was holding additional charge of the Coal Ministry. So, he had no role to play in the matter. “Repeated attempts have been made to try and drag him into it by the Centre. As this is election time, efforts are being made by some vested elements to tarnish the clean image of Patnaik,” Mishra alleged.