New Delhi, July 10 : The Supreme Court today asked the Centre to file records of all 36 steering committee meetings held for allocating coal blocks.
The apex court pulled up the central government for not responding "comprehensively" on irregulatrities in the coal block allocation.
While taking up the status report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the apex court clearly indicated that it was unhappy with the response of the government.
The apex court also went through the affidavit filed by the Centre regarding autonomy for the CBI, this was after the court hauled the agency and lamented it was a “caged parrot” in the hands of the government.
Last week, in the court monitored investigation into the coal scam, the CBI had submitted its progress report in a sealed cover.
In its report, the CBI has reportedly stated that there might be special circumstances when the agency would need to share details with the government as when it seeks the government's sanction for prosecution.
The court had directed that the CBI should not share any details of their investigation with the government.
The Supreme Court had, during the last hearing, said that only the investigating officers and the CBI Director should know the details of the probe.
The Supreme court had taken strong exception to the fact that the then Law Minister Ashwani Kumar as well as officials from the Prime Minister's Office and the Coal Ministry had vetted the CBI's status report on its investigations into the Coal-gate scam.
Describing the CBI's functioning as one of a "caged parrot that speaks in different voices of different masters", the apex court had asked the Centre to come up with a legislation to grant functional autonomy to the premier investigation agency.
The Government thereafter constituted a GoM to give greater autonomy to the CBI.
The apex court asked the Centre to appropriate counter affidavit with all supporting documents in 4 weeks justifying allocation of
164 coal blocks. "We are concerned urgently with the non-partisan investigation by CBI", the court observed.
The court wanted to know from the Attorney General why govt sanction was needed in the court-monitored probe.
"There is lot of deficiency/infirmity in decisions taken by screening committee", the court observed after perusing CBI's fresh status
report.
The court sought CBI's view by July 16 on Centre's affidavit on steps taken to bring functional autonomy of the probe agency.
" CBI is struggling with the probe in the absence of documents on the decision taken by screening committee on coal blocks
allocation", the apex court observed.
