New Delhi: The CBI, which is investigating the giant coal scam,
today questioned entrepreneur Arvind Jayaswal, Director AMR Iron and
Steel Private Limited, whose company is closely linked to Congress MP
Vijay Darda - his son, Devendra, is listed as a director. In its FIR or formal complaint , the CBI says says that AMR's directors lied about crucial information in their application for coal blocks- they inflated the net worth of AMR and did not disclose that the company had already been given five coal blocks. The CBI says that this information was shared later with the junior minister for Coal, but an inquiry did not follow. Santosh Bagrodia of the Congress was the Minister of State for Coal at the time, and the CBI's statement indicts him without naming him.
AMR and its directors are among five firms -three of them owned by the Jayaswals - who have been accused by the CBI of deliberately misleading the government with incorrect information to corner coal fields. The Jayaswal family was given ten coal blocks for a maze of companies.
The case against AMR relates to coal fields it got in 2008 in Bander in Maharashtra. The investigating agency says that in September 2008, representatives of AMR met with the Minister of State for Coal and allegedly admitted that they had already been give coal fields. The CBI says in its complaint that "Public servants in the ministry of coal in pursuance of criminal conspiracy, willfully did not take the enquiry to its logical conclusion, thus allowing undue advantage to AMR Iron & Steel."
The CBI has already said that it plans to question bureaucrats who colluded with companies to help them corner coal blocks illegitimately.
While his son, Devendra, is listed in the FIR against AMR Iron and Steel, Congress MP Vijay Darda and his brother Rajendra who is Maharashtra's Education Minister, have been named in another case of cheating and conspiracy by the CBI -- that of JLD Yavatmal Energy Limited, co-owned by the Jayaswals, which bagged the Fatehpur East Coal Block in Chattisgarh. Mr Darda, who is to be questioned soon, has refuted all allegations against him.
Several Jayaswal companies are in the dock now for misreporting info in their applications, and for failing to develop coal blocks that they were assigned. An inter-ministerial group is examining 58 companies, half of them privately-owned, for failing to hit the milestones laid out in their contracts for the coal fields that they were assigned.
