The Prime Minister’s Office on Friday handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation the file on the controversial allocation of an Odisha coal block to Kumar Mangalam Birla-owned Hindalco in 2005.
PMO sources said: “The CBI had sought the file. We gave the file and got the receipt.”
The PMO is understood to have told the CBI that it is ready to provide any other information, if required, about the allocation of the Talabira coal block. A CBI official said: “The files were handed over to us in the evening. The documents will be examined before deciding further course of action.”
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The controversy erupted over the allocation after the CBI registered a First Information Report against Mr. Birla and the former Coal Secretary, P.C. Parakh, last week.
Meanwhile, it has been revealed that Mr. Parakh wrote way back in 2005 to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Cabinet Secretariat that the Coal Ministry was being run by a coal mafia which, he said, existed within the government and not outside.
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Mr. Parakh wrote to the then Cabinet Secretary, B.K. Chaturvedi, on March 22, 2005 alleging large-scale black marketing and generation of black money with mafia patronage in the existing marketing system.