UPA’s agony: save or delete CBI tells court of key changes
R. BALAJI May 7, 2013
New Delhi, May 6: The CBI today told the Supreme Court that the Union law minister and officials of the PMO and the coal ministry had made “significant changes” to its March 8 status report on the coal-allocation probe, but insisted that no suspect had benefited from those alterations.
The political firmament is now awaiting the apex court’s response on Wednesday. Any condemnation of the deletions is expected to make the continuation of law minister Ashwani Kumar untenable and arm the Opposition with ammunition to directly target the Prime Minister. ( )
CBI sources and the government were seeking solace in assertions that the essence of the agency’s affidavit only strengthened the government’s case that it had followed the then established processes in allocating the coal blocks. (See chart)
But the issue is so complex that the embattled government will find it difficult to battle a perception of interference in the investigation process. The government’s inability to explain economic factors in a lucid manner in the absence of a political will — as was in evidence when the 2G scandal erupted — is also expected to saddle it with an image millstone.
In his sworn affidavit, CBI director Ranjit Kumar Sinha claimed that the changes were acceptable to the agency since they related to merely tentative findings, and that they had not altered the course of investigations nor led to any accused being spared.
He further described at least one of the four purported changes as factually correct, and attributed two of the changes to the law minister and two to joint secretaries from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the coal ministry.
Earlier, the then additional solicitor-general, Harin Raval, had told the court the status report had not been shared with the political executive. Sinha, who had contested the claim on April 26, today said Raval had made the statement on his own without any such advice from the CBI.
The shared status report relates to the CBI’s “preliminary enquiry” (PE), conducted routinely in cases to find some prima facie material. When such material is found, the agency conducts the “regular inquiry” by registering an FIR.
Sinha said the CBI had not shared the status reports of the regular cases it had started in the coal-allocation scandal with either the political executive or the attorney- general.
As for the changes made to the PE status report, he said they “have neither altered the central theme of the report, nor shifted the focus of enquiries or investigations in any manner”.
At the last hearing, the court had asked for the names of the two officials who had been shown the draft status report apart from the law minister, attorney-general and additional solicitor-general, and the names of the CBI officers investigating the case.
Sinha today said the officials were PMO joint secretary Shatrughna Singh and coal ministry joint secretary A.K. Bhalla.
On which joint secretary was responsible for which change, he said: “It is difficult at this stage to attribute each change to a particular person with certainty.”
Sources said later that Shatrughna, an Uttarakhand cadre 1983-batch officer, had been posted in the PMO since March 2010 and looked after personnel and general administration and cabinet affairs. Coal allocation is part of the duties of Bhalla, a 1984-batch officer.
The two officers were part of a meeting in the chamber of CBI joint director O.P. Galhotra on the evening of March 6, after law minister Kumar had met the CBI director in his office in the morning.
CBI director Sinha submitted today that Bhalla and Shatrughna had “regular interaction” with his officers.
Former CBI director Vijay Shankar said that “if the officers were called by the CBI and were cooperating with the agency for inquiry, they could be asked to verify that what the investigators had understood was in line with what was purported by the officers. The draft status report is merely an executive summary of ongoing investigation, but its integrity has to be of the highest order.”
But Sinha had said on April 26 that the draft report was shared with the law minister as well as the two officers “as desired by him” and “them”.
Sinha today admitted that the nine-page affidavit, which purports to give a blow-by-blow account of the various meetings held before the changes were made, was based on his and his officials’ memory since no minutes of the meetings existed.
Then additional solicitor-general Raval had resigned amid controversy a few days ago after accusing attorney-general G.E. Vahanvati of turning him into a “scapegoat”.
The case relates to public interest petitions filed by a lawyer and an NGO.
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