SC rejects Sinha’s plea to recall order
The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a plea of former CBI director Ranjit Sinha seeking recall of court’s earlier order constituting a SIT to probe allegations of prima facie scuttling the investigation into coal scam cases during the UPA-I regime.
A three-judge bench headed by Justice Madan B Lokur said there were no reasons to recall the January 23 order in which the Supreme Court had observed that a prima facie case was “definitely” made out for probing allegations of abuse of authority by Sinha when he was the director. The bench, also comprising Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice AK Sikri, said, “We do not find any reasons to recall our order. The application is dismissed”.
In January, the top court had asked CBI director Alok Verma to head SIT into the matter.
The scam involved alleged corruption in the allocation of coalfields between 2004 and 2009. In 2012, the CAG had pegged the loss from the scam at around ₹1.86 lakh crore. That figure has often been contested by experts, but the public outcry over the scandal helped usher in certain smallbore reforms in the coal sector, including the introduction of e-auctions.
In 2014, based on a petition filed in public interest, the Supreme Court had ordered a court-monitored CBI investigation and quashed the “illegal and arbitrary” allocation of 214 coal blocks made by the Centre between 1993 and 2010.
A year later, a inquiry was ordered against Sinha on an application filed by NGO Common Cause who alleged that he, as the CBI head, had met several of the accused when the agency was investigating the scam.