Coal scandal: Dardas not booked for corruption in CBI chargesheet

New Delhi: Congress MP Vijay Darda and his relatives, who are among those that the CBI has booked in connection with its investigation into coal block allocations, have been charged with cheating and not with corruption; all the others against whom FIRs were registered earlier this week have been charged with corruption too.

The First Information Report against JLD Yavatmal, accessed by NDTV, shows that unlike in FIRS filed against other companies, no charge under the Prevention of Corruption act has been filed against the Darda family or the Jayaswal family. The FIR, which was registered on Monday, was filed in a Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's Court instead of a special CBI judge's court, which looks only into corruption cases.

The CBI says the application for allotment of coal blocks made by JLD Yavatmal in January 2008 omitted some vital information, and so a prima facie case of corruption  and collusion with public servants cannot be made out.

Mr Darda who is also the Editor-in-Chief of Lokmat, Maharashtra's best-selling vernacular daily, says that his association with JLD Yavatmal, named after his father, ended in 2009.

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Cases have also been filed against four other firms that include Jas Infrastructure, in which Mr Darda and his son hold 7% stake,  AMR Iron and Steel, Vinni Iron and Steel and Navbharat Power.  Mr Darda set up  Jas Infrastructure and  JLD Yavatmal with influential businessman Manoj Jayaswal. The politician says that in 2009, he ended his association with the latter because it cancelled plans for a power plant in Yavatmal, the district that he belongs to.

Sources say it's unlikely that Mr Jayaswal's different companies were collectively given 20 coal blocks without the influence of his high-level connections. Mr Jayaswal's political clout is on display in photographs from his daughter's wedding which he celebrated in Delhi and Mumbai in 2009. Seen with the entrepreneur are current Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, as well as senior BJP leaders like LK Advani and Nitin Gadkari, who is from Nagpur, like Mr Jayaswal.

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The CBI's inquiry is rooted in a complaint filed by BJP leader Prakash Javadekar four months ago with the government's anti-graft department or Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). Then, last month, the government auditor or CAG said that 142 coal fields allocated between 2004 and 2009 had allowed private firms to get windfall benefits of upto 1.86 lakh crores because the coal mines were sold at highly undervalued rates, instead of being auctioned. While the government has rejected that finding, the Opposition has seized it to insist that the Prime Minister must step down