Coal scam: Court summons Himachal EMTA Power Ltd, its three officials as accused

NEW DELHI: Himachal EMTA Power Ltd (HEPL) and its three senior officials, including its two Directors, have been summoned as accused by a special court in a coal scam case for allegedly misrepresenting facts to acquire a coal block in West Bengal.

Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar summoned HEPL, its two Directors, Ujjal Kumar Upadhaya and Bikash Mukherjee, and its senior official N C Chakraborty for the alleged offences under sections 120-B(criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating) of IPC.

The court, which took cognisance of the CBI's charge sheet in the case, asked them to appear before it February 29.

"I am of the considered opinion that prima facie there is sufficient incriminating evidence on record warranting summoning of accused persons i.e. company M/s HEPL, its two directors Ujjal Kumar Upadhaya and Bikash Mukherjee and N C Chakraborty, CGM (Power), M/s HEPL for offences under section 120-B and under section 120-B/420 IPC and also for substantive offence i.e. under section 420 IPC," the judge said. Gourangdih ABC

CBI has chargesheeted HEPL, Upadhaya and Mukherjee in the case but the judge said that "though CBI has not chargesheeted N C Chakraborty in the present case but I do not find myself in agreement with the said conclusion drawn by CBI."

The court said, "there are no plausible reasons spelt out in the final report which could form a logical basis for not prima facie concluding that information supplied by N C Chakraborty to the Government of West Bengal was not in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy of which certain acts were already performed by Upadhaya and Mukherjee."

In its charge sheet, CBI has alleged that HEPL had grossly misrepresented about its status of preparedness not only in its application form but also in the feed back form submitted on June 22, 2007 and in the information supplied by Chakraborty to the West Bengal Government.

It claimed that Upadhaya and Mukherjee had deliberately conspired with HEPL and submitted false information to the Ministry of Coal (MoC) to secure allocation of Gourangdih ABC coal block in West Bengal in its favour.