Hearing on a public interest litigation the Supreme Court has issued notice to the central government and the CBI in which it has sought cancellation of all coal blocks allocated to private companies and a SIT probe into the alleged scam.
The bench of Justice R.M. Lodha and Justice Anil R. Dave issued the notice on a joint PIL by NGO Common Cause and other eminent people, including former cabinet secretary T.S.R. Subramanian, former chief election commissioner N. Gopalaswami and others.
The PIL has demanded cancellation of all coal blocks and probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) into the arbitrary manner in which these were allocated, purportedly causing huge loss to public exchequer.
Prashant Bhushan counsel who appeared for the Common Cause and other petitioners contended that the CBI was most unsuited to undertake the probe, as people involved in the coal scam were either ministers, or their kith and kin and all influential people. He wanted to SIT probe in the matter.
He said that the CBI was focusing on the misrepresentation by a few companies, which were not eligible for allocation of coal blocks, and the agency was not concentrating in irregularities committed in the allocation process itself.
India’s Attorney General G.E. Vahanvati told the court that the central government will file two separate replies - one dealing with an earlier petition by advocate petitioner M.L. Sharma and the other by the Common Cause.
The court tagged the Common Cause petition with the one filed by M.L. Sharma and fixed the next hearing for Jan 24, 2013.
(With inputs from IANS)
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