Apex Court pulls up Centre for not aiding CBI coalgate probe
12 July 2013 5:05 AM IST
The Supreme Court on Wednesday, hearing the alleged irregularities in the coal block allocation, pulled up the central government for not helping Central Bureau of Investigation, saying that the CBI is struggling with the probe in absence of documents on decisions taken by screening committees on coal block allocation. After perusing the CBI’s fresh status report, the court said that ‘there is lot of deficiency/infirmity in decisions taken by screening committees’. The court asked the central government to file a comprehensive affidavit justifying allocation of 164 coal blocks.
A bench, comprising of Justice R M Lodha, Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice Kurian Joseph, asked the central government to place before it all documents, records and minutes of the 36 meetings of screening committee to justify the allocation of coal blocks. The court said, ‘If you have not done, you must do it. Otherwise the entire exercise would be meaningless. We are concerned with decision taken in each and every case. The question is whether the decision was taken correctly or not and whether there were objective considerations or not.’
The court made it clear that it would like to have placed before it entire documents and minutes of all 36 meetings of the screening committee and it would not like to hear that they have been destroyed. It said there was a need for justifying all the allocations for which the decisions were taken at the screening committee as ‘the CBI still continues to have the same position as the records are not available to it’ and its status report also indicated that ‘recommendations of state governments were changed mid-way’.
The bench said it would consider on July 17 CBI's two separate applications in which it has sought modification of its 8 May direction to lift the bar on sharing the probe report and removing the restriction on changing the 33 member investigating team.
After the hearing in the case started, the court went through the affidavit of the central government on autonomy of CBI and left it to the Parliament to decide the contents of the proposed law for making CBI autonomous and said it would review after a decision is taken. The bench expressed satisfaction that the central government has taken steps for bringing amendment in law for making the agency autonomous and insulate it from extraneous influences. ‘There is some positive beginning,’ said the bench.
‘We can wait for the exercise to be done. When the government comes out with amendment in Parliament then there would be flow of opinion from its members. Let the Parliament debate on it and then we will look whether it fulfils the objective of making CBI autonomous. We should wait a little,’ it said.
The bench said ‘the proposed amendments in the DSPE Act shall obviously take some time’. However, it said it was concerned urgently with the non-partisan investigation by the CBI and asked the agency to respond by 16 July to the proposal of the central government.
On the plea of CBI for allowing it to share probe reports with government for purposes including the need for sanction, it said ‘under the garb of sanction, we won’t allow the CBI to share the contents of probe report with political executive’.
A bench, comprising of Justice R M Lodha, Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice Kurian Joseph, asked the central government to place before it all documents, records and minutes of the 36 meetings of screening committee to justify the allocation of coal blocks. The court said, ‘If you have not done, you must do it. Otherwise the entire exercise would be meaningless. We are concerned with decision taken in each and every case. The question is whether the decision was taken correctly or not and whether there were objective considerations or not.’
The court made it clear that it would like to have placed before it entire documents and minutes of all 36 meetings of the screening committee and it would not like to hear that they have been destroyed. It said there was a need for justifying all the allocations for which the decisions were taken at the screening committee as ‘the CBI still continues to have the same position as the records are not available to it’ and its status report also indicated that ‘recommendations of state governments were changed mid-way’.
The bench said it would consider on July 17 CBI's two separate applications in which it has sought modification of its 8 May direction to lift the bar on sharing the probe report and removing the restriction on changing the 33 member investigating team.
After the hearing in the case started, the court went through the affidavit of the central government on autonomy of CBI and left it to the Parliament to decide the contents of the proposed law for making CBI autonomous and said it would review after a decision is taken. The bench expressed satisfaction that the central government has taken steps for bringing amendment in law for making the agency autonomous and insulate it from extraneous influences. ‘There is some positive beginning,’ said the bench.
‘We can wait for the exercise to be done. When the government comes out with amendment in Parliament then there would be flow of opinion from its members. Let the Parliament debate on it and then we will look whether it fulfils the objective of making CBI autonomous. We should wait a little,’ it said.
The bench said ‘the proposed amendments in the DSPE Act shall obviously take some time’. However, it said it was concerned urgently with the non-partisan investigation by the CBI and asked the agency to respond by 16 July to the proposal of the central government.
On the plea of CBI for allowing it to share probe reports with government for purposes including the need for sanction, it said ‘under the garb of sanction, we won’t allow the CBI to share the contents of probe report with political executive’.
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