File photo of CBI Director Ranjit Sinha
The Opposition today asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to explain in Parliament how crucial files related to the coal allocation scam went missing, but the government rejected the demand.
"The Prime Minister cannot go from House to House making statements, he handles a lot of ministries," Rajya Sabha MP and Congress general secretary Ambika Soni told NDTV.
The CBI said some of the missing documents were crucial to their investigations against Congress MPs Naveen Jindal and Vijay Darda, who are accused of bagging coal blocks illegally.
"We had written a letter to the Coal Ministry in May for documents related to all 13 FIRs (police complaints) in the case, we are yet to receive any response," CBI director Ranjit Sinha told NDTV, adding another twist to the allegations swirling around the missing files connected to the allocation of coal blocks to private companies at throwaway prices, at a huge cost to the government.
The Opposition alleges some of those missing files are from the time the Prime Minister headed the coal ministry between 2006 and 2009.
"165 files are missing and these include files from the time the Prime Minister was in charge of the coal ministry, and many Congress leaders were allocated coal blocks," BJP's Lok Sabha MP Yashwant Sinha told NDTV.
But Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal claimed that around 150 documents are missing, all non-controversial as they were related to applications for coal blocks, not allocations.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly admonished the government for trying to influence the investigation. In May, the CBI conceded that officials from the Law Ministry and Prime Minister's Office had altered a confidential report on its investigations before it was shared with Supreme Court judges.