Cuttack, Sept. 12: A fresh petition has been filed in Orissa High Court reminding it that decision regarding the necessity of a CBI probe into the multi-crore mining scam in Odisha has been pending for 16 months.
The petition has sought direction to the Odisha government to submit an up-to-date action-taken report on the scam.
Bhawani Shankar Parija, one of the petitioners who had filed a PIL seeking CBI probe, filed the fresh appeal on Tuesday. It alleged that unchecked illegal mining and smuggling out of manganese ores from mines in Keonjhar region, which had not been leased out, is continuing.
The scam had rocked the Naveen Patnaik government forcing it to order a vigilance inquiry in July 2009. Subsequently, as many as six PILs seeking CBI probe on the scam were filed between November 2009 and March 2011.
The PILs, filed by lawyers Pratap Rout, Subrat Tripathy, Bhawani Parija, Rini Rath, Surendra Mukhi, Prashanta Das and former MLA Uma Ballav Rath, were taken up for analogous hearing along with an intervention petition filed by Biswajit Mohanty.
After hearing the arguments, a two-judge bench that included Chief Justice V. Gopala Gowda and Justice B.N. Mohapatra reserved judgment on April 18, 2011. A decision has since been pending.
On October 31, 2011, Parija had filed a petition seeking intervention against any transaction involving mining ores in Odisha till the pronouncement of verdict on petitions seeking CBI probe on the multi-crore scam. But the judgment has not yet followed.
Arguments during adjudication of the PILs centred on contentions directed against alleged inadequacies in infrastructure and limitations of the vigilance wing, as influential persons having connection with persons in the government were allegedly involved in the scam.
The state government opposed a CBI probe claiming the vigilance sleuths to be fully competent, equipped with necessary logistics and manpower to conduct the investigation. The government contended that a CBI probe was not necessary as the central empowered committee of the Supreme Court had already inquired into the illegal mining and an inquiry commission has been appointed by the Government of India for probing on illegal mining across the country.
