New Delhi, May 19: A CBI court today convicted former coal secretary H.C. Gupta and two other IAS officers of irregularities in coal block allocation.
The two other officers are K.S. Kropha, the Meghalaya chief secretary who was joint secretary in the Union coal ministry at the time of the allocation in November 2008, and K.C. Samaria, the then director, who has now retired. The three officers have been found guilty of corruption, cheating and criminal conspiracy.
Special CBI court judge Bharat Parashar also held Pawan Kumar Ahluwalia, the managing director of Kamal Sponge Steel and Power Ltd (KSSPL) that was awarded the Thesgora-B Rudrapur coal block in Madhya Pradesh, guilty of cheating and criminal conspiracy.
This is the first time senior government officials have been convicted in the coal block allocation scam.
The court will pronounce the quantum of punishment on May 22.
During trial, the CBI had alleged that the application filed by KSSPL for the coal block was incomplete and should have been rejected by the ministry as it was not in accordance with its guidelines. It also accused the company of misrepresenting its net worth and pointed out that the Madhya Pradesh government had not recommended the firm for allocation of the coal block.
All the accused had denied the allegations.
Gupta was coal secretary for nearly two years in the UPA government before retiring in 2008. He had chaired the screening committee for coal block allocation and had been accused of not following a transparent auctioning system and favouring private companies, causing losses in crores to tax payers.
During the hearing last year, Gupta had claimed that then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had given the "final approval" for allocation of the coal block to KSSPL. The court, however, observed that Singh, who had been holding the coal portfolio, had been "kept in the dark" by Gupta.
As news of Kropha's conviction began to trickle in, questions were raised on whether he would remain in office. Kropha, who is in Delhi, could not be contacted.
Senior bureaucrats at the Meghalaya main secretariat, which houses the chief secretary's office, declined comment. Yeshi Tsering, senior-most of the many additional chief secretaries, refused to speak. Principal secretary in-charge of the personnel department, Rebecca Suchiang, said, "Nothing official has come".
Kropha is a 1982 batch IAS officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre and is a domicile of Himachal Pradesh. A soft-spoken officer, he took over as the chief secretary on February 29, 2016. Prior to that, he was the principal secretary (home). He will superannuate in December this year.
A senior lawyer in Shillong said Kropha and others can appeal in the high court within 60 days.
The Opposition Hill State People's Democratic Party (HSPDP) demanded immediate sacking of the chief secretary. "He (Kropha) should be removed immediately, else the state's image will be tarnished," HSPDP chief Ardent Miller Basaiawmoit said.
MLA Jemino Mawthoh said, "This person should go because once he is convicted, he can longer continue in the office." Whether Kropha will continue in office will be clear once chief minister Mukul Sangma, who is in Belgium, returns next week.
Additional reporting by Andrew W. Lyngdoh and Rining Lyngdoh in Shillong
