Manmohan Singh has to answer on coal scam
The summons issued by a Special Court to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has been named as one of the accused in the case of allotting a coal block to Hindalco, part of the Kumar Mangalam Birla Group, has stunned everybody. Mr Singh is “upset” but says he will prove his innocence in a “fair trial”. The Congress has rallied behind him, legal experts have upheld the discretion of the judge to summon him, the Bharatiya Janata Party has remarked that the sins of certain people have returned to hound the former Prime Minister, and a non-Government organisation that advocate Prashant Bhushan helms is gleefully pursuing the matter, saying Mr Singh cannot be absolved of the irregularity. It would be premature to pass a public verdict of ‘guilty’ against the former Prime Minister, and the law must take its own course. Mr Singh will have every opportunity to present his defence, and so it up to him to clear his name. But certain facts cannot be denied.
The first is that Mr Singh was also the Minister for Coal when the allocation to Hindalco, of the Talabira II coal block in Odisha, took place in 2005. The second is that the allocation was done through a discretionary mechanism and not by the auction route which officials in the Ministry of Coal, including then Coal Secretary PC Parakh and a screening committee, had recommended. The third fact is that the Central Bureau of Investigation, which was inquiring into the case under the supervision of the Supreme Court, had, after registering a First Information Report, filed a closure report. The fourth point is that the court had rejected the closure report and directed the CBI to pursue its probe. The fifth fact is that a senior official in the investigating agency had long back suggested that the former Prime Minister should be questioned on the deal. And finally, the Supreme Court had cancelled almost the entire allocation of coal blocks done during Mr Singh's regime, thus making it clear that serious wrongdoing had been resorted to, in the process.
The legal debate is whether the former Prime Minister can be tried for criminal culpability under the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act, or whether his decision was merely a case of presiding over wrong policy and its subsequent fatal implementation. Nobody has suggested so far that Mr Singh had derived pecuniary benefits from the decision. But those rooting for his prosecution say that his consent for wrongdoing, which resulted in a loss to the exchequer, amounts to criminal offence per se. The Special Court judge has, “prima facie”, found a case of criminal conspiracy. This is from where matters proceed from now on.
legal issues aside, the former Prime Minister simply cannot escape answering tough and uncomfortable questions. There is enough material to suggest that he went along the path of giving allotments on a purely ad hoc basis although he had himself expressed a desire to adopt the transparent auction route. There is also material to demonstrate that a few of his Ministers had pushed for — and succeeded in having — such discretionary allotments. So, the buck stopped with Mr Singh, whether he admits it today or not.