Coalgate: CBI to record statement of PM’s adviser TKA Nair
19 Jun 2013 5:49 AM IST
Before recording the statement of prime minister Manmohan Singh’s adviser TKA Nair in the coalgate scam, the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) quizzed two former PMO officials Vinee Mahajan and Ashish Gupta in the same matter. Both of them were in screening committees that allotted the coal blocks and were questioned regarding the same. CBI sources said the agency will soon call Nair to record his statement as witness in connection with alleged irregularities in the allocations made during 2006 to 2009.
Vinee Mahajan and Ashish Gupta, who were posted in the Prime Minister’s Office during 2006 and 2009, the sources said, too have been questioned as witnesses in the case.
During the said period, prime minister Manmohan Singh was handling the charge of coal ministry. Mahajan, a 1987-batch IAS officer from the Punjab cadre, was a director with the PMO during the period and has now been repatriated back to the state where she is a principal secretary. Gupta, an IPS-officer of 1989-batch from Uttar Pradesh cadre, who was the vigilance officer in the PMO, has also gone back to his cadre. The working of the screening committee has come under the scanner of the agency as the CBI has accused ‘unnamed officials of the screening committee’, in its latest FIR against Congress MP Naveen Jindal and former minister of state Dasari Narayan Rao, of being part of a criminal conspiracy.
CBI sources said the committee did not follow the mandatory procedures and did not carry out proper background checks while allocating coal blocks to the companies. In its status report filed on 8 March, the CBI had said that the coal blocks allocation during 2006-09 was done without verifying the credentials of companies which allegedly misrepresented facts about themselves and no rationale was given by the coal ministry in giving coal blocks to them. CBI has so far registered 12 FIRs in the matter.
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