#pc parakh

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PC Parakh: A Spotless Record

Bureaucrats who know him, all call him an upright officer. The Comproller and Auditor General characterised him as a whistleblower in its report on the coal scam. But now he is under the scanner of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on charges of alleged criminal conspiracy.

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Coalgate: Ex-top bureaucrats back Parakh's accusation on PM

Former top bureaucrats have come out in support of ex-Coal Secretary P C Parakh, who has been named by CBI in the coal blocks allocation scam, warning that harassment of honest officers will erode Government's credibility and stop senior officers from taking decisions. "Parakh, as I have known him, is an honest, competent officer. While I do not wish to comment on the CBI investigation as such, as I do not have all the facts, I am at a loss to understand how an FIR has been filed only against him and no one in the PMO and no Minister," said E A S Sarma, former Coal Secretary. If it is a case of conspiracy, all the conspirators should be taken into account. I hope there is no conspiracy!, said Sarma, a former IAS officer.

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Coal scam: CBI books former coal secy, KM Birla

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Tuesday lodged a case against former coal secretary PC Parekh and chairman of the Aditya Birla Group Kumar Mangalam Birla for alleged irregularities in the allocation of two coal blocks in Odisha in 2005.

A CBI spokesperson said an inter-ministerial screening committee had allocated two coal blocks at Talabira-2 in Jharsuguda district of Odisha exclusively to the Tamil Nadu-based public sector unit Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC) under the government dispensation scheme.

But later, it allowed Hindalco to share these blocks with NLC. The change came after a meeting between KM Birla and the then coal secretary PC Parekh, the spokesperson said.

However, the agency has so far found no evidence of any quid pro quo between the two, a CBI official said.

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PM's boys nixed ex-coal secy over auction ordinance back in 2004!

PC Parakh, widely considered the whistleblower of Coalgate, tells Governance Now how it all stacked up, and that he regrets even comptroller & auditor general Vinod Rai missed the resultant machinations that perpetuated massive loot of taxpayer’s money.

In March 2004, PC Parakh, asked a curious – and as it turned out, clairvoyant – question to Kamal Pande, the then cabinet secretary. “Why have I been picked up for the job of coal secretary?” he asked.

Pande, the seasoned Kumaoni Brahmin, remained enigmatic, but Parakh recalled, “He did confirm that there were several contenders for what’s considered a lucrative job!”

It’s seldom remembered that Mamata Banerjee was the coal minister at that time. So she, in technical sense, for the act of accepting Parakh in her ministry, planted a whistleblower among the coal mafia!

“Yes, I was surprised how I was picked up (for the job of coal secretary),” Parakh told me during a conversation, “but it is also true that by then she (Mamata) had got busy with preparations for the general elections.”

So nothing really exciting came off in the new coal secretary’s life between March and May 2004. Likewise, the ‘screening committee’, created to legitimise the government’s opening of gates of coal in 1993.

As coal secretary, Parakh remained wary of chairing the committee and handing out lucrative coal mines to private-sector applicants, the chosen dispensation of rewarding political donors. It was the lack of process and norm that scandalised Parakh – particularly the system of keeping everyone happy by subdividing a mine.

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