Delhi court convicts former Coal Secretary HC Gupta, ex-Rajya Sabha MP Vijay Darda and 5 others in coal scam case

A Delhi court recently convicted former Coal Secretary HC Gupta along with former Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) Vijay Darda and others in a case related to irregularities in allocation of a coal block in Chhattisgarh..In an order pronounced on Thursday, Special CBI judge Sanjay Bansal also convicted IAS officers KS Kropha and KC Samria, Darda’s son Devender Darda, a company named JLD Yavatmal Energy Pvt Ltd and its Director, Manoj Kumar Jayswal.The Court held all the accused guilty of offences under Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) read with Section 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 13(1)(d)(iii) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.“Further accused M/s JLD Yavatmal Energy Pvt. Ltd. (A-1), Manoj Kumar Jayaswal (A-2), Vijay Darda (A-3) and Devender Darda (A4) are also held guilty and convicted for the substantive offence u/s 420 IPC. Further accused HC Gupta (A-5), KS Kropha (A-6) and KC Samria (A-7) are also held guilty and convicted for the substantive offence punishable u/s 13(1)(d)(iii) r/w S. 13(2) of the PC Act. However, accused HC Gupta (A-5) is acquitted for the offence punishable u/s 409 IPC and u/s 13(1)(c) PC Act,” the Court ordered.This is the 13th conviction in the scam. .The case relates to allocation of coal blocks which were advertised in 2006. It was alleged that JLD had concealed various facts in its application form in order to obtain wrongful gain in allocation of the coal block. It was said that the coal block was allocated to JLD as a result of active collaboration between the office bearers of the company and the officials of the Ministry of Coal (MoC) -- Gupta, Kropha and Samria.While Gupta was then Coal Secretary and Chairman of the Screening Committee, Kropha was posted as Joint Secretary in the MoC and was the Member Convener of the Screening Committee. Samria was also posted in the MoC and the allegation went that all the applications were received in his office and his office supervised the entire process of processing the applications right through the entire process of allocation of coal blocks..The CBI had filed a closure report in the case on April 15, 2014 stating that there was no material to show commission of any criminal conspiracy of cheating. However, the closure report was rejected by the predecessor judge in November 2014. The judge said that private parties had committed an offence of cheating and there was active connivance with the officials of the MoC..In an order running into over 400 pages, the Court has now held that the accused company did make misrepresentations and dishonestly induced the Government of India.“The intention to defraud on the part of accused persons is writ large on the face of record. It is also clear that all the acts committed by the accused persons have been fraudulently done with a dishonest intention. But for the deception and resulting dishonest and fraudulent inducement caused to the Screening Committee, the MoC and thus to the Govt. of India, there would have been no allocation of coal block to the accused company,” the Court noted.On the role of the public servants, the Court said that they must be liable for their actions and even though the guidelines issued by the MoC to govern the allocation of captive coal blocks may not be termed as law under Article 13 of the Constitution, they were binding upon the officers.“By no stretch of imagination, the accused MoC officers can claim that even though the guidelines were issued by them intimating the public at large as to how captive coal blocks shall be allocated but while exercising the said discretion they were not bound to follow the said guidelines. In fact the said guidelines in no way took away the discretion either from the MoC officers or from the Screening Committee but simply regulated the exercise of such discretion so vested in them, lest their actions may venture into the arena of unreasonableness, arbitrariness or in any sort of illegality,” the Court underlined. It added that allocation of coal block to an ineligible company is against public interest and the actions of the three officers conclusively show that their efforts were to somehow recommend allocation of the coal block in favour of JLD..The case will be listed on July 18 to decide on the sentence of the convicts. .[Read Judgment]