A Delhi court on Friday convicted former Coal Secretary HC Gupta, former Joint Secretary KS Kropha, Kamal Sponge Steel and Power Ltd and its Managing Director PK Aluwalia of criminal conspiracy in the allocation of the Rudrapur coal block to KSSPL in Madhya Pradesh. The bench, however, acquitted chartered accountant Amit Goyal.

The Central Bureau of Investigation had named Gupta in at least eight chargesheet in connection with the case. In February this year, the former coal secretary and six others managed to get bail in the Fatehpur coal block allocation case in Chhattisgarh. All seven accused were charged with forgery, cheating, criminal conspiracy and criminal misconduct.

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The scandal surfaced after the Comptroller and Auditor General found discrepancies in government allocations of coalfields during former prime minister Manmohan Singh’s term and a loss of some Rs 1.86 lakh crore to the national exchequer. Jindal Steel and Power Ltd, Hindalco, Essar Power, Tata Steel and Tata Power were among the 25 companies named as beneficiaries in the CAG report.

In August 2016, Gupta had refused to take any legal help in the case as he said he had no money to afford an advocate. It attracted the attention from the Indian Administrative Services fraternity. Around 60 senior bureaucrats had held a meeting and decided that the IAS association will reach out to the officer and help him with the case. However, later he agreed to get a lawyer.

In April this year, the CBI filed a case against its former director, Ranjit Sinha, for allegedly meeting some of the prime accused at his house and trying to influence the investigation into the case.

Here is a round-up of pieces published on Scroll.in on the coal scam case:

  • What the people defending former coal secretary HC Gupta are not telling you: Instead of challenging the captive coal block scam, he seems to have played along in the process.
  • Why does the IAS Association defend HC Gupta but not Ashok Khemka?: Call it whataboutery, but it is not. It tells us something crucial – about the bureaucracy and ourselves.  
  • Why the CBI cannot claim any glory in filing a chargesheet against Naveen Jindal: As long as the United Progressive Alliance government was around, the agency continued to scuttle its investigations into coal block allocation cases.
  • Questions the CBI should answer before closing its probe in the Jindal coal block case: From the start, controversy surrounded two allocations – to JSPL and a Tata-Sasol venture – by the UPA government.
  • Manmohan Singh must explain how did a coal block reserved for the public sector land with a private firm?: Talabira III is missing from the list of coal block allocations but it is central to the CBI’s case against the former Prime Minister.