The Bharatiya Janata Party in Maharashtra has submitted evidence running into 12,000 pages on the Coalgate scam to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
On Friday, senior BJP leader Kirit Somaiya stated that he, along with other State party members, had deposited the evidence, spilling into 24 files and pertaining to 168 bogus companies linked to 6 Union and State government Ministers, with the CBI.
“We have submitted all the evidence to the Deputy-Inspector General of the CBI, Mumbai, with the exhortation that they take the investigations forward,” Mr. Somaiya told reporters here, while accusing the Congress of putting pressure on the investigative agency and shielding tainted Ministers.
All these companies had financial transactions with the Jaiswal-Darda-Sahay families, alleged Mr. Somaiya.
Ispat Alloys Ltd whose share was priced at a nominal Rs. 2, was sold at a premium of Rs. 628 a share.
The company was not even listed in the stock market and had no functional business model, said the BJP leader.
Similarly, the shares of Asera Banka Power Pvt. Ltd, that had its registered office in the city’s Nariman Point area, sold its shares allotted at Rs. 10 at a staggering Rs. 8,885. “Is this a coal mine or a gold mine? A dysfunctional company is selling its shares at a premium of more than Rs. 8,000 a share,” said Mr. Somaiya.
Likewise, he cast aspersions on the role of a Maharashtra Minister in the affair, alleging that he had recently bartered a deal with the Abhijeet Group of companies (one of the companies against which the CBI has filed a case) wherein he had awarded a road contract of Rs. 1,256 crore to the latter corporation in lieu of a Rs. 100-crore kickback.
Mr. Somaiya had recently filed an 800-page PIL petition against the same Minister, demanding a probe against him for awarding multi-crore contracts for the construction of the Maharashtra Sadan building in New Delhi.
The BJP has been demanding the resignation of Maharashtra Education Minister Rajendra Darda while alleging that both the Darda and Jaiswal families had made a killing through the favourable allocation of coal blocks in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand at subpar market rates. Earlier this week, the CBI filed cases against five companies for alleged criminal conspiracy to get coal blocks by fudging their net worth figures, while naming Mr. Darda’s brother, Congress MP from Maharashtra Vijay Darda, in one of the FIRs.
