New Delhi: A Delhi court on Wednesday sentenced former Rajya Sabha member Vijay Darda and his son, Devendra Darda, to four years imprisonment in a case relating to irregularities in the allocation of a coal block in Chhattisgarh, reported news agency ANI.
The court also sentenced JLD Yavatmal Energy Pvt Ltd director Manoj Kumar Jayaswal to a four-year jail term while former coal secretary H C Gupta and two other officials K S Kropha and K C Samaria received a three-year jail sentence.
Earlier this month, special judge Sanjay Bansal held the accused guilty of criminal conspiracy (punishable under Section 120-B of IPC) and cheating (punishable under section 420 of IPC), and under relevant sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
The court accepted the submissions made by senior Public Prosecutor A P Singh that the CBI was able to prove its case beyond all reasonable doubts. It had on November 20, 2014 refused to accept the closure report submitted by the CBI in the case and directed the federal probe agency to investigate it afresh, stating that the former MP had "misrepresented" facts in letters written to the then prime minister, Manmohan Singh, who held the coal portfolio.
A major scandal had rocked the Manmohan Singh government in 2012 after the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) panned the government for inefficient allocation of 194 coal blocks to public sector enterprises and private companies between 2004 and 2009 for captive use in a non-transparent way.
It said instead of allocating the valuable natural resource, the government should have gone for competitive bidding. Many politicians were claimed to have lobbied for private entities and helped them secure these blocks. Several entities got more blocks for mining than they needed and sold the excess coal in the open market resulting in huge windfall. The CAG initially estimated a massive loss of Rs 10.6 lakh crore to the exchequer, but its final report tabled in Parliament put the figure at 1.86 lakh crore.