Coal scam: SC stays summons for Ex-PM Manmohan Singh, P C Parakh, K M Birla

FILE – In this Wednesday, May 21, 2014 file photo, outgoing Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh leaves after paying homage to former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi on his death anniversary, in New Delhi, India. (Source: AP)

The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed the summons against former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who also held the coal portfolio, in a coal block allocation scam case.

A bench led by Justice V Gopala Gowda also stayed the trial court orders of summons against Kumar Mangalam Birla, his company Hindalco, former coal secretary P C Parakh and others in connection with the 2005 allocation of the Talabira-II coal block in Orissa.

The court, while issuing notices to the CBI on a clutch of six petitions in the case, also stayed the proceedings before the trial court.

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It has also issued a notice to the Centre on Hindalco’s petition challenging the constitutional validity of a provision in the Prevention of Corruption Act, which was invoked by the trial court in issuing summons.

Singh and others had moved the court last week seeking quashing of the summons as accused in the case.

A special court had on March 11 summoned Singh as an accused in the case after observing that there was a “conscious effort on his part to somehow accommodate” the Aditya Birla Group flagship Hindalco in the 2005 allocation of the Talabira-II coal block in Odisha.

It had also summoned five other accused namely Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of Aditya Birla Group; former coal secretary P C Parakh; Hindalco Group executive president B Shubhendu Amitabh and managing director D Bhattacharya.

Apart from Singh, Birla, Bhattacharya, Parakh and others have also approached the court and sought quashing of the summons.

Singh, in his petition, has argued that the summoning order was not legal and against the principles of the criminal jurisprudence. Apart from challenging the order on various technical grounds, the petition maintained that there was no instance of alleged criminality that could be attributed to any of his acts as coal minister.

It asked for an imminent stay on further proceedings, saying the summons would have grave ramifications on his personal liberty besides causing irreparable damage to his reputation.

The petition said there was nothing on record to point out that Singh has done any act which may constitute an offence. The former prime minister had taken decisions as a competent authority on allocation of Talabira-II coal block to Hindalco on the representation of Orissa government, it said.

As per the petition, the trial court judge had sought to substitute his own opinion over the views of the functionaries at various levels.

In his petition, Singh has termed as “ridiculous” the logic behind the issuance of summons. It said an administrative decision could be “good or bad” but it was unheard of to introduce criminality into the decision by terming it post-facto as against public interest.

“There is not even a whisper of allegation in the order summoning Singh as an accused that he had any criminal intent in the coal block allocation,” the special leave petition said and stressed on the “strict liability classification” adopted in criminal law for making a person accused in a case.

“An official while taking a decision must be aware of the criminality in the decision. It was only then that the criminal liability for the decision could be fastened on him. Otherwise, any administrative decision could be termed post-facto as against public interest making every officer or public servant cower under the fear of being summoned as an accused even if he/she had bona fide believed in the correctness of the decision,” said the plea.

Moreover, it is not for the court to decide whether an administrative decision was good or bad and whether or not it was against public interest, he said. “The duty of the court is only to see whether any crime has been committed and if so whether there was evidence to nail the guilty.”

Birla’s petition said that the trial court order would pose a danger to criminal jurisprudence.

Birla said the trial court was completely wrong in understanding the mechanism of allocation and it failed to appreciate that the guidelines could not impinge on the discretion of the Prime Minister’s Office in dealing with these matters.

Source:: Indian Express