A special court on Thursday fixed May 19 for pronouncing its order on framing of charges in a coal blocks allocation scam case allegedly involving Delhi-based Rathi Steel and Power Limited (RSPL) and its three officials.
Special CBI Judge Bharat Prashar posted the order for May 19 in the case in which RSPL and its top officials - Managing Director Pradeep Rathi, Chief Executive Officer Udit Rathi and AGM Kushal Aggarwal - were summoned as accused by the court. The case pertains to alleged irregularities in allocation of Kesla North coal block in Chhattisgarh to RSPL. The accused were chargesheeted for alleged offences under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating) of the IPC. During the arguments on framing of charges in the case, all the accused had contended that CBI has "miserably" failed to show that there was a loss to the government or anybody else due to the allocation of coal block to RSPL. The defence counsel had said that the accused firm has not extracted any coal from the Kesla north block and there was no wrongful gain or corresponding loss to anybody.
HC refuses to issue contempt notice to Naveen Jindal
The Delhi HC on Thursday refused to issue any contempt notice to Jindal, for one of his former employees' act of recording court proceedings during a coal block allocation matter relating to his company. A bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva simply listed the matter for further hearing on May 25 and did not heed the Centre's repeated pleas for issuing a contempt notice to Jindal. "We have heard your arguments. Let's move on to the main matter," the bench said, adding it will decide later whether to issue contempt notice. The Coal Ministry, represented by ASG Sanjay Jain and advocate Akshay Makhija, contended that notice be issued in the matter to Jindal as well as the employee Rajesh Sharma, who was caught recording.