The Chhattisgarh government on Friday refuted the charges made by Opposition Congress that BJP national president Nitin Gadkari had a hand in awarding contract to a Nagpur-based company, owned by his own party MP Ajey Sancheti, for commercial mining of a coal block in the state.
Speaking to the media for the first time after the CAG exposed three months ago the alleged irregularities in the award of the contract to mine the coal block allotted to state-owned Chhattis-garh Mineral Development Corporation Limited (CMDCL) by the Centre, CMDCL chairman Gouri Shankar Agrawal said the beneficiary company, SMS Infrastructure, has been chosen in 2008 as a joint venture partner of the state undertaking through a legal and transparent bidding process.
“There was no political influence over selection of the firm to develop and mine the coal block allotted to CMDCL. Congress’ charge that Mr Gadkari played a role in the process is absolutely baseless. Neither Mr Gadkari was the BJP president nor Mr Sancheti was BJP RS member when the latter’s firm was awarded the contract,” Mr Agrawal told reporters.
He said a national competitive bidding was invited for selection of a joint venture partner of CMDCL to mine the coal block since the corporation lacked resources to develop the mine. The corporation still holds ownership of the coal block, having 51 per cent stake in the joint venture company floated for the purpose, while SMS Infrastructure has 49 per cent stake.