(Top) Badri Narayan Patra and Pratap Jena

Cuttack, June 29: Orissa High Court today rejected a PIL seeking a CBI inquiry into the multi-crore coal linkage scam.

The scam involved alleged largescale diversion of linkage coal to open market by supplying subsidised coal to the non-existent firms. A member of the High Court Bar, Nishikanta Mishra, had filed the petition in July 2010 and later alleged involvement of two ministers. The state vigilance has been probing into the scam.

“The division bench of Chief Justice V. Gopala Gowda and Justice B.N. Mohapatra expressed disinclination for ordering a CBI probe while disposing of the PIL on Monday,” petitioner counsel Siba Narayan Panda told The Telegraph today.

“The division bench, however, directed the state vigilance to complete the inquiry as soon as possible,” Panda said.

Last year, the Opposition blocked the Assembly proceedings during the Monsoon session for nearly two weeks demanding scalp of two ministers — Badri Narayan Patra and Pratap Jena — during whose tenure the scam had allegedly taken place. The Opposition had also demanded a CBI probe into the scam and said the state vigilance would not do a fair probe. Chief minister Naveen Patnaik had categorically asserted that his ministers were not involved in the scam.

In its affidavit before the high court, the state vigilance had stated that probe into the linkage coal scam had “so far revealed supply of the subsidised coal to as many as 20 fictitious/non-existent firms”. The affidavit said 34,142 metric tonnes of the subsidised coal were distributed in the name of these fake firms.

The affidavit said the Orissa Small Industries Corporation (OSIC) and the Orissa Consumer Cooperative Federation (OCCF) were the nominated agencies in the state with an allocation of two lakh tonnes and one lakh tonnes of subsidised coal, respectively.

The coal ministry’s linkage coal policy had specified that small and tiny consumers in the industrial sector with annual consumption of less than 4,200 metric tonnes were entitled to get subsidised coal through agencies nominated by the state governments. Such consumers get coal at the base price of around Rs 850 per metric tonne against average auction rate of Rs 1,400 per metric tonne and market rate of Rs 2,500 per metric tonne.

However, the probe had found that nine firms had been given 25,708 metric tonnes of the subsidised coal by the non-existent federation. Similarly, eleven firms, which were allotted 9,001 metric tonnes of the linkage coal by the fictitious corporation, the vigilance department stated in the affidavit.

The scandal had surfaced following reports of largescale diversion of linkage coal to the open market. The state vigilance (special cell) had moved in and stumbled upon supply of the subsidised coal to the non-existent firms in June 2010 and since registered cases against more than 25 persons, including senior officials of the corporation and the federation in the process of probe.

Of the 20 non-existent firms identified so far, according to the affidavit, 10 were in Cuttack district, six in Jajpur district and four in Kendrapada district. During the course of investigation as many as 83 witnesses had been examined and 67 documents seized.