Ex-Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda has been found guilty of corruption in the special court in Delhi today. The coal scam was a scandal that showed irregularities in assigning, and inefficiently allocation of the Rajhara North coal block in Jharkhand to Kolkata-based Vini Iron and Steel Udyog Ltd (VISUL). The punishment for the crimes committed by Koda will be decided by the special court tomorrow. Others who have been accused of corruption are, former Jharkhand Chief Secretary AK Basu, two public servants, VISUL’s director, Koda’s alleged close aide Vijay Joshi and a chartered accountant. Among the people who were acquitted of all charges are, VISUL’s director Vaibhav Tulsyan and public servants Basant Kumar Bhattacharya and Bipin Bihari Singh and chartered accountant Navin Kumar Tulsyan.
A CBI probe was launched in 2012, to investigate the case of corruption and gross discrepancies in the records. It alleged that the government, had chosen not to allocate the coal blocks to the firms by competitive bidding, which cause the public and private firms to pay less then they should have previously, if the government had followed the rules.
At first, it was suspected that the Government had neglected the rules, but hadn’t done it because of some nefarious purposes, until, the claims of corruption within the system began to take shape and then dominated the discussion. The case was the handed over to the CBI, which named several firms in its FIR, which was the first step in the investigation.
All the accused parties have obviously refuted the accusations, but Coalgate became a subject of outrage because of the attention from Media and the anti corruption movement that was on the rise during that time. Now, as he is been convicted, a more concrete punishment or sentence is going to follow for Koda, and others involved in the scam.
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