(From top) Vaibhav Tulsyan’s residence in Dhanbad’s Chanchani Colony; Auroma Coke Limited’s office in the coal capital; and Panchwati Apartment on Kanke Road, Ranchi. Pictures by Gautam Dey and Hardeep Singh

Sept. 4: The CBI today raided 30 locations across the country, including in Jharkhand, after filing cases against five companies for alleged criminal conspiracy to get coal blocks by fudging their net worth figures and misrepresenting facts.

The investigative agency also named Congress MP Vijay Darda in one of the FIRs.

Five companies — JLD Yavatmal Energy Limited, in which Darda was one of the directors, JAS Infrastructure Capital, AMR Iron and Steel, Navbharat Power and Vini Iron and Steel Udyog — with their 20 directors and unknown government officials have been named in the FIRs, CBI sources said.

The filing of cases and raids come in the midst of a controversy over the CAG report on the coal block allocation that has stalled Parliament for more than two weeks.

However, the CBI said the action had nothing to do with the CAG report and had been in the pipeline for quite some time. The raids were conducted in Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Patna, Hyderabad, Dhanbad and Nagpur and searched premises of owners of some companies.

“The cases have been registered in connection with the allegations related to getting coal blocks allocated on the basis of misrepresentations and false claims in the applications, presentations and connivance or lack of due diligence on part of public servants.

“Promoters of some of these companies have allegedly sold their stakes in an irregular manner after allocation of coal blocks,” the agency said in a release.

CBI sources said in one of the FIRs, Darda’s name figures as a director in JLD Yavatmal Energy which got Fatehpur East coal block in Chhattisgarh as part of the alleged criminal conspiracy by misrepresentation of facts on the eligibility conditions.

In Dhanbad, Vaibhav Tulsyan, whose offices and home were searched by the agency for his alleged association with Vini Iron and Steel, claimed he had sold the company to Vijay Joshi, a close aide of then chief minister Madhu Koda. Both Joshi and Koda are now in jail.

“I do not know why the searches are taking place at my office and home. I sold the company five months before coal block allocations. I was not the beneficiary allottee. My only fault was that I was the applicant for coal blocks.

“Because of the Naxalite problem, we were not able to run the company, so when Joshi, who was a close aide of Koda, approached us with a good offer, we sold the company to him. At the time of coal block allocation, the company was already with Joshi,” Tulsyan said. However, CBI officials in Dhanbad said the company was allocated a coal block in Rajhara North Block area of Daltonganj in 2010.

CBI sources added they were investigating if Tulsyan had only transferred the documents in the name of Joshi and was still deriving benefits from the company.

Notably, this in not the first raid on the Tulsyan family and their company Auroma Coke Limited. A joint team of CBI and vigilance department of BCCL had raided the offices of the company and Tulsyan’s home in connection with the coal linkage scam on March 18, 2011.

In Dhanbad, the raids today began simultaneously in five places — an office in Bank More, Tulsyan’s home in Chanchani Colony, a hard coke unit and coal washery owned by him on GT Road and the home of Tulsyan’s partner Hemant Rajgharia.