New Delhi: In a relief to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed the trial court order summoning him as accused in a case pertaining to grant of Talabira-II coal block in Odisha in 2005 to Aditya Birla group company Hindalco.
The stay, which also applied to Hindalco Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, former Coal Secretary P C Parakh and three others, came after senior counsel Kapil Sibal questioned the legality of the summons to the former Prime Minister citing lack of sanction as required under the CrPC and contended that allocation of a coal block was an administrative act without any criminal intent.
“We issue notice on all six petitions. The trial court order shall remain stayed,” a bench of justices V Gopala Gowda and C Nagappan said after hearing arguments by Sibal, who represented the former Prime Minister, and other lawyers in the case.
82-year-old Singh’s daughters, Upinder Singh and Daman Singh, were present in the court during the proceedings. The trial court, in its order, says that you did not follow the screening committee and this is contrary to law, Sibal said, adding that the order summoning the PM does not stand the scrutiny of “public reasoning”. During the hearing, the bench asked the counsel for Singh to satisfy it on provisions relating to grant of sanction to prosecute a public servant.
There has to be a meeting of minds to do a criminal act with regard to allocation of Talabira coal mines to a private firm, he said, adding, where is the criminal conspiracy? Is it an offence to grant coal mines to a private sector company?”
A judge can reject the closure report and may take cognizance of the closure report but cannot decide the nature of the investigation, he said. The former Prime Minister had, on March 25, moved the apex court seeking quashing of the summons against him and stay of criminal proceedings in a CBI court.
Singh had sought quashing of the summons on the ground that the March 11 order of the trial court was passed without application of mind. The former Prime Minister had also sought a stay on the criminal proceedings contending that there was no element of criminality in his decisions taken in the capacity of Coal Minister.
The plea had said that there was nothing on record to point out that Singh had done any act which may constitute any offence, adding that the former Prime Minister had only taken a decision as a competent authority on allocation of Talabira-II coal block to Hindalco on the representation of Odisha government.
The Special CBI court had on March 11 said that prima facie it is clear that the criminal conspiracy which was initially conceived by Birla, Hindalco and its two officials, was carried out further “by roping in Parakh, and thereafter the then Minister of Coal, Manmohan Singh”.
It had said that Singh’s approval to allocate coal block to Hindalco “prima facie facilitated windfall profits” to the private firm resulting in loss to state-owned PSU Neyveli Lignite Corporation Ltd (NLC).
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