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“If Sinha (Ranjit Sinha, then CBI Chief) was convinced that the Hindalco allocation was a conspiracy and had the courage of conviction, he ought to have named the Prime Minister (then Manmohan Singh) in the FIR,” PC Parakh, former Coal Secretary, had said in his book Crusader or Conspirator? Coalgate and Other Truths.
Parakh, who has been under scrutiny since ‘Coalgate’ broke in 2012, is among those who have been summoned as accused by a special court hearing the case pertaining to the allocation of Talabira-II coal block in Odisha in 2005.
Speaking to BusinessLine from Hyderabad, Parakh said he had no indication this was coming. He said his first reaction to the summons by the special court was that of surprise.
He said he is still awaiting a final communication and will decide his course of action thereafter.
Interestingly, Parakh stood vindicated when the Supreme Court in September 2014 endorsed his proposal for the open bidding mechanism while scrapping all the earlier coal block allocations.
Parakh had then told this paper that: “Had it not been for me proposing open bidding for coal blocks, the government auditor would not have initiated it, and no one would have known how blocks were allotted.”
In his book, Parakh bared the issues and controversy surrounding the Talabira II coal block:
“However, about Talabira II coal block, in which the CBI has registered an FIR against Kumar Mangalam Birla and me, I can say without hesitation that the CBI is either outright incompetent or is playing a deeper game which I do not understand. What can be more absurd than the CBI questioning the bonafides of Naveen Patnaik merely because he made a recommendation in favour of Hindalco?
‘Wasting public money’“If a Chief Minister is not to canvass for projects he thinks would generate employment and revenue for his state, what is he Chief Minister for? With this kind of investigation, after wasting thousands of crores of public money, Coalgate may also end in a whimper like Bofors.”
Parakh goes on to say, “The actual culprits responsible for the delay in the introduction of a transparent system, and those who benefited from the delay, could go scot-free.”
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