Bhubaneswar, April 6: The Supreme Court Monday dismissed a special leave petition seeking to summon Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in the Talabira II coal block allocation case, the petitioner’s lawyer said here.
The bench of Justice V Gopal Gowda and Justice C Nagappan also imposed a fine of Rs.1 lakh on the petitioner.
“The apex court said the petitioner has no locus standi to file the petition. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh,” Suresh Tripathy, counsel of petitioner N K Sahu, told IANS.
In his petition filed March 11, Sahu had told the apex court that a special Central Bureau of Investigation court had summoned former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, industrialist Kumar Manglam Birla and former coal secretary P C Parakh but Patnaik was not summoned.
He sought that summons be issued to the Orissa Chief Minister on the grounds that it was his letter to the Central government that had tilted the scales in favour of Birla’s Hindalco in the allocation of the Talabira II coal block in Sundargarh district, despite it being already allocated to central PSU Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC).
Patnaik had written to Manmohan Singh in 2005 seeking to allocate the Talabira II coal block to Hindalco. The apex court has already stayed the summons issued by the special court to Manmohan Singh.
The issue had hogged national headlines after six persons including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former coal secretary PC Parakh were summoned in the case by a special CBI court in Delhi. Both Congress and BJP had questioned Patnaik’s role in the case.
Meanwhile, the BJD camp went into a celebration mood. Welcoming the ruling, the party said the decision is a major blow for those who were deliberately trying to drag BJD government and its chief to the matter. PNN,AGENCIES
