Law Minister Ashwani Kumar
On Friday, sources say, the CBI will admit to the Supreme Court that Law Minister Ashwani Kumar reviewed the agency's report on "coal-Gate" and suggested a "list of alterations," many of which were ignored by the CBI which submitted the document to the Supreme Court last month.
Sources also say that the Law Minister sent the suggested changes to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) but did not receive a reply.
"There is reason to believe PMO officials were involved in the proposed changes to the coal report," said BJP leader Arun Jaitley, hours after the opposition in parliament demanded the PM's resignation.
"Let all emails exchanged between PMO officials and the Law Ministry on the coal report be made public at once ," said Mr Jaitley to NDTV.
In the report the CBI gave to the court last month, it said that the government had failed to check the financial and other records of companies that landed cheap coal licenses. The agency is expected to invoke this indictment to prove that its report was not compromised. " It makes no difference whether the government's attempt at interference was successful," said Mr Jaitley.
The CBI's investigation is meant to be independent, and its report is meant to be confidential between the court and the agency.
When it received the document, the Supreme Court had asked the CBI director, Ranjit Sinha, to submit a written assurance by April 26 that the document had not been seen by "the political executive."
The coal scam is particularly sensitive for the government because for some of the years under review, the Prime Minister was directly in charge of the Coal Ministry. The allegation against the government is that it cost the country thousands of crores because it did not follow a transparent bidding process when allocation coal blocks.