Supreme Court Not to Hear Manmohan Singh’s Coal Scam Case on September 21

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NEW DELHI: Today, The Supreme Court ordered cancellation of appeals filed by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and others from its list of business of September 21, in a case of coal block allocation in which he was summoned as an accused by the trial court.

A bench of Chief Justice H L Dattu and Justice Arun Mishra said, “These items are deleted from the list.”

Former cabinet minister and senior lawyer, Kapil Sibal led a team of lawyers which sought the dropping of Mr Singh’s name of the matter from the list of cases scheduled to come up before the Court on September 21.

The bench said that these appeals will be taken up for hearing after they are mentioned before the court. With today’s order, the stay on proceedings in the trial court by the apex court may also get extended, said sources.

The deletion assumes significance as a special bench had recently refused to grant temporary relief to former minister of state for coal, Santosh Bagrodia, in another coal scam case. The court had indicated that it might take up his petition very shortly along with the plea of the former Prime Minister.

When senior lawyer K K Venugopal, appearing for Mr Bagrodia, had sought exemption from personal appearance before the trial court on the ground of parity, the special bench had denied the relief saying that his plea would be shortly taken up in 10 to 12 days along with that of Mr Singh’s petition. The bench had also said earlier that it may dismiss both the petitions.

Today Mr Sibal told the bench headed by Mr Dattu, that the appeal filed by the former Prime Minister, who was also holding the Coal portfolio then, has raised several important issues.

Earlier on April 1, the apex court had stayed the trial court order summoning former Prime Minister as an accused in a coal block allocation case and the proceedings before it. The relief was also extended to Hindalco Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, whose company was granted Talabira-II coal block in Odisha in 2005, former Coal Secretary P C Parakh, two Hindalco officials Shubhendu Amitabh, D Bhattacharya, and the company itself.