Former Jharkhand Chief Minister and Member of Parliament from Singhbhum, Madhu Koda was granted bail by the Jharkhand High Court on Tuesday in a case related to irregularities in allotment of rural electrification work to the firm IVRCL Limited under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana, when he was the Minister for Power in Jharkhand. Mr. Koda and his aide Vinod Sinha are accused of receiving Rs 11.4 crores from IVRCL for awarding it contracts worth Rs. 400 crore. With this, Mr. Koda has got bail in all five cases he is accused in.
“Mr. Koda has been in jail in this particular case since October 2011 and the Central Bureau of Investigation is yet to file a chargesheet. On Vinod Sinha (a co-accused)’s appeal, the Supreme Court had on April 5, asked the CBI to file a chargesheet by the end of three months and they failed to do so. They got an extension of three weeks and that period ended today and they had still not filed a chargesheet,” said Mr. Koda’s lawyer Bishwajeet Mukherjee.
Mr. Koda who had floated the Jai Bharat Samanta Party was Jharkhand’s Chief Minister as an independent candidate between 2006 and 2008 supported by Congress, Rashtriya Janta Dal, and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha is accused in four other cases in an alleged Rs. 4000-crore scam. His wife Geeta Koda, MLA from West Singhbhum, is among the six MLAs representing smaller regional parties supporting the Congress- Jharkhand Mukti Morcha coalition government led by Hemant Soren formed this month.
Mr. Koda had been in jail since November 2009 after he was arrested following Income Tax Department raids on his premises. Besides this case, Mr. Koda is accused in a case related to laundering money violating Prevention of Money Laundering Act, in a disproportionate assets case related to an alleged bribe taken to recommend a mining lease, in a case of allegedly accepting a bribe for the appointment of R K Sinha as Chairman of Jharkhand Pollution Control Board, and use of these funds in Lok Sabha elections in 2009, and violating the Income Tax Act by not filing an income tax returns.
Since April 2012, Mr. Koda has been granted bail in four cases by the Jharkhand High Court and in the Enforcement Directorate’s case related to money laundering by the Supreme Court. He is expected to be released from Birsa Munda prison in Ranchi on Wednesday.
