CBI court convicts bureaucrat, others in coal scam case
India Today
A court on Friday convicted former Union Coal Secretary HC Gupta and others in a coal scam case related to irregularities in the allocation of a coal block in Maharashtra.
A Special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Friday convicted former Coal Secretary HC Gupta, former Joint Secretary, KS Kropha, Nagpur-based firm Grace Industries Limited and its director Mukesh Gupta for irregularities in the allocation of a coal block in Maharashtra.
The case relates to the allocation of the Lohara East Coal block in Maharashtra and the CBI had filed a case on September 20, 2012. The coal block was located in an area of 3.5 square kilometers and had an estimated geological reserves of approx 57 million tons. The coal block was jointly allocated to Grace Industries Limited along with Murli Industries Limited.
The court will now hear the arguments on the point of sentence on August 4, 2022.
During the investigation, it was revealed that Grace Industries Limited had secured an allocation of 16.14 million tons of coal reserves in the coal block on the basis on false information about net worth, capacity, equipment and status of procurement and installation of the plant.
It was found that the said private company in its application claimed its net worth as Rs 120 crore whereas its own net worth was Rs 3.3 crore. The company falsified its existing capacity as 1,20,000 tonnes per annum (TPA) against actual project capacity of 30,000 TPA.
The private company in feedback claimed two kilns in production and three kilns under installation whereas as of September 7, 2006, the company had only one kiln in operation.
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