New Delhi: A Special CBI Court for Coal Cases convicted former junior minister for coal Dilip Ray in Brahmadiha Coal Block for violating the guidelines framed for allocation to give undue favour in allocating the coal block. Ray was the minister of state for coal in the Atal Behari Vajpayee – led National Democratic Alliance government.
The Special Court also held former additional secretary coal Pradip Kumar Banerjee, and former Coal Ministry Project Adviser Nitya Nand Gautam, Castron Technologies Ltd., Dhanbad, and its director Mahendra Kumar Agarwalla as well as Castron Mining Ltd, Kolkata, guilty in the allocation scam.
The case was filed on January 7, 2014 and in April 2017, the court had framed charges against Ray who had pleaded innocence.The court will decide the quantum of sentence to the convicts on October 14, 2020.
The Brahmadiha Coal Block is situated in District Giridih in Jharkhand, and it was established that it was not included in the list of captive coal mining at any point in time.
Ray, a veteran politician from Odisha whose career spans about four decades had resigned from the Bharatiya Janata Party on November 30, 2018 and also quit as legislator as he was unhappy with the delay in in execution of two mega projects in Rourkela, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
– globalbihari bureau
