Agency questiones two ex-PMO officials and will record statement of PM’s adviser TKA Nair
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh faced major embarrassment on Tuesday as the CBI questioned two officials who worked in the Prime Minister’s Office in 2006-07, in connection with the coal block allotment scandal. The agency decided to record the statement of his adviser TKA Nair and has also summoned as accused former Coal Secretary HC Gupta.
The development could provide fresh ammunition to the Opposition, which has been demanding the Prime Minister’s resignation for his alleged role in the allotment of coal blocks as Coal Minister between 2006 and 2009.
Sources said the agency has recorded the statements of two officials, Vini Mahajan and Ashish Gupta, who were posted in the PMO during 2006 and 2009. They were asked about details of some coal blocks that were allotted to private firms when Manmohan Singh held direct charge of the Coal Ministry.
Mahajan, a 1987-batch IAS officer from Punjab cadre, was a Director with the PMO during the period and has now been repatriated back to the State where she is a Principal Secretary-level officer.
Gupta, an IPS-officer of the 1989-batch from Uttar Pradesh cadre, who was the Vigilance Officer in the PMO, has also gone back to his cadre. During this period, TKA Nair was the Principal Secretary in the PMO. CBI sources say the agency will question him as witness soon.
In a related move, the CBI has asked former Coal Secretary HC Gupta, who recently resigned as member of Competition Commission of India, to appear before it for questioning as an accused in the case on Thursday.
The agency is likely to question him about the clearances for the allocation of coal blocks given by the Screening Committee which was chaired by him on several occasions.
Gupta being the Coal Secretary was the de-facto Chairman of the Screening Committee which allocated coal blocks during 2006-09, the sources said.
The working of the Screening Committee has come under the scanner of the agency as the CBI has accused “unnamed officials of the Screening Committee,” in its latest FIR against Congress MP Naveen Jindal and former Minister of State Dasari Narayan Rao, of being part of a criminal conspiracy.
The sources said the committee did not follow the mandatory procedures and did not carry out proper background checks while allocating coal blocks to the companies.
In its status report filed on March 8, the CBI had said that the coal blocks 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.
last month, the CBI had received flak from the Supreme Court for sharing its status report in the coal scam with the then law Minister Ashwani Kumar and senior officials of the PMO and the Coal Ministry and also incorporating changes suggested by them.
The apex court said that sharing of information with the Government about the probe into the scam has “shaken the entire process” and asked the CBI not to take instructions from its “political masters” on their probe.