A Delhi court summoned JSPL chairman Naveen Jindal and three others in coal scam case.
Former Congress lawmaker Naveen Jindal, an industrialist, has been summoned by a Delhi court in connection with a coal scam case in Madhya Pradesh. Mr Jindal, 47, has been formally charged by the CBI in connection with the alleged irregularities in the allocation of coal mining blocks when the Congress-led UPA was in power.
The court has also issued summons to three more persons and the Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) company, asking them to appear on September 4.
The case relates to the allocation of a coal mining block in Urtan. They are also charged with cheating as the CBI says in their application for mining rights, they claimed to have blast furnaces in Chattisgarh and steel plant in Odisha.
The investigating agency also alleges that despite the state government recommending that the Urtan block be given to Tata Steel and Ispat, the allocation was bagged by Jindal steel. Last week, three former coal ministry officials including ex-Secretary HC Gupta were held guilty of corruption by a special CBI court, which said that the illegal deals were not known to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was in charge of the coal ministry.
Aspects of non-compliance with rules, said the court, were not known to Dr Singh, who was "kept in the dark" and misled by senior bureaucrats.
It was Mr Jindal's case that was seized by the opposition in 2013 as proof of corruption on Congress watch, by its own members, and used in parliament by lawmakers who demanded Dr Singh's resignation.