Coalgate: Supreme Court declines immediate relief to ex-MoS Coal Santosh Bagrodia

Former Union Minister Santosh Bagrodia on Monday failed to get relief similar to ex-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a coal scam case, with the Supreme Court refusing to grant him exemption from personal appearance as accused before a special court tomorrow.

"Let him appear tomorrow. We will examine his plea shortly in eight or ten days," a bench headed by Justice M B Lokur said while declining the plea of Bagrodia, former Minister of State for Coal in Singh's cabinet who has been summoned as accused by special CBI court in a case concerning allocation of Maharashtra's Bander coal block to AMR Iron and Steel Pvt Ltd.

"We are not dismissing his petition. Let him appear," the bench, also comprising Justices Kurian Joseph and A K Sikri, said as it remained unimpressed with the Congress leader's counsel K K Venugopal, who sought parity in grant of relief given to former Prime Minister in another case of coal scam.

The apex court on April 2 had stayed the trial court order summoning Singh as accused in a case pertaining to grant of Talabira-II coal block in Odisha in 2005 to Aditya Birla group company Hindalco. The order also applied to Hindalco Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, former Coal Secretary P C Parakh and three others -- Hindalco, Shubhendu Amitabh and D Bhattacharya, its officials.

The apex court also did not accept Venugopal's plea that a notice be issued on Bagrodia's petition seeking stay of July 21 order of the Special Court summoning the former junior coal minister as accused in the case.

"No notice, we will consider his petition," the bench said while declining to take note of Venugopal's submission that "why is this case being taken on a different footing".

When the issue of former Prime Minister was raised more than once, the bench said it will come for hearing in due course and it is not necessary that his petition will be accepted.

"We may decline the other one (Singh's petition) also. We don't know," the bench said, adding that "we don't have the papers (of Singh's petition) before us. Wait for 8-10 days...We can issue notice after 10 days also," the bench said and assured him that the matter will be listed shortly and not after two months.

Another senior lawyer and Congress MP K T S Tulsi joined Venugopal at the fag end of hearing urging the bench to issue the notice. However, he also got the same reply from the bench which asked "what is the problem if we issue notice after eight or ten days." 

Venugopal said the issuance of notice will help Bagrodia to tell the special court that the matter was before the apex court and the hearing in the case can be adjourned. Along with Bagrodia, ex-Coal Secretary H C Gupta and retired public servant L S Janoti were also summoned as accused in the case.

The trial court has taken cognisance of the alleged offences punishable under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) read with 420 (cheating), 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant) under the IPC and under relevant provisions of the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act. These three accused were summoned as accused in the case in which the CBI had earlier chargesheeted Rajya Sabha MP Vijay Darda, his son Devendra Darda, AMR Iron and Steel Pvt Ltd and its Director Manoj Jayaswal as accused. Except Bagrodia, all the other accused have been granted bail in the case.