File pic: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
A Delhi court today ordered the CBI to further investigate a 2005 coal block allocation involving top industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla's company and asked the agency to record the statement of former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh, who was coal minister at the time.
Rejecting the CBI's closure report in the allotment of a coal block to Mr Birla's firm Hindalco, a special judge told CBI, "I desire that the statements of then coal minister be recorded."
The investigating agency has been asked to file a status report on January 27.
In September, the court had asked the CBI to explain why it was in "in such a hurry" to close the Hindalco case. It sharply rebuked the agency, asking it to "get its house in order" because it was unable to come up with important documents and answers.
The agency closed a case against Mr Birla and former top bureaucrat PC Parakh that was part of the scandal dubbed "Coal-Gate" which exploded in 2012 after the state auditor alleged 1.86 lakh crores had been lost because mining licenses had not been allotted through a transparent bidding process.
The CBI filed the case against Mr Birla and Mr Parakh, the former Coal Secretary, in relation to a block allocated in 2005 to Hindalco Industries, part of the $40 billion Aditya Birla Group led by Mr Birla.
The agency said that Mr Parakh had overruled a government committee to assign the block to Mr Birla after he met with the entrepreneur. Mr Parakh has denied any wrongdoing and said Mr Birla presented a strong case for the coal blocks to be given to his firm, which had been the first applicant for them.
The CBI, justifying its decision to drop the case, said in a statement, "The evidence collected during investigation did not substantiate the allegations levelled against the persons named in the FIR (first information report)."
In August, the Supreme Court ruled that all coal blocks allocated by successive governments since 1993 are illegal.