New Delhi: The government is left red faced in the coal scam as on one hand the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) plans 'not to hide anything' from the Supreme Court while on the other its two top law officers are engaged in an all out war in the case. The Opposition is demanding Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's resignation after Additional Solicitor General Harin P Raval wrote a letter to Attorney General GE Vahanvati accusing him of interfering with the CBI's case in the scam.
Raval in his letter has alleged that he has been made a scapegoat in the case and goes on to says that Vahanvati interfered in the CBI case. Raval also narrates the sequence of event of the meeting between Vahanvati and Law Minister Ashwini Kumar in preparing the report coal scam.
"On 6th March, I received a message from your end, asking me to see the Law Minister. During the course of discussions, the draft of one of Status Report of one of the preliminary inquiries was shown to the Law Minister and was perused by him as well as by you. Other status reports of the investigations of the 9 regular cases were requested to be shown to you at your residential office. Despite the above facts while replying to queries you took a stand that the contents of the Status Report were not known to you. On account of your statement, I was forced to take a stand, in court, consistent with your submission. I have a feeling that I am sought to be made scapegoat," Raval said in the letter.
Raval's outburst has given the opposition more ammunition to target the UPA government and Manmohan Singh.
"The Government of India colluded with Raval in willful misinterpretation of facts before the SC. We are more concerned to know what the accountability of the Prime Minster is because the Prime Minister himself is an object of investigation," BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
"The ASG has thrown open a pandora box by making the allegations. What more proof does the country want about the culpability of the Prime Minister? The PM should resign," BJP leader Rajiv Pratap Rudy said.
Meanwhile, CBI sources have now said that changes were made in the status report on coal scam after a meeting with Law Minister Ashwani Kumar. CBI sources say they will not hide anything from the Supreme Court, which will hear the case on Tuesday and will decide whether the government tried to influence the CBI probe.
The CBI had on Friday filed its affidavit on the coal block allocation scam report with the Supreme Court, in which agency director Ranjit Sinha had said that the draft report was shared with the Law Minister, a charge the Congress has rejected. The director had also said the draft of the report was even shared with the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and Coal Ministry officials.
The CBI is set to submit both the status reports to the Supreme Court on Tuesday in a sealed envelope, sources said. In March, the probe agency had said in its status report that many companies were given coal blocks through false representations and that there was no rationale for allocation of the blocks. The Supreme Court had ordered the CBI not to share the report with the government. It has also asked the Centre to explain why a small group of companies were favoured.
But sources have told CNN-IBN that government is likely to tell the apex court that the Law Minister did no wrong in seeing CBI's report. The government is likely to say that any meeting between the CBI and the Law Ministry happened before that assurance.
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