Supreme Court relaxes order mandating Coalgate appeals only before itself, allows Delhi high court to hear them

Apex court on Coalgate case

NEW DELHI: Diluting its 12year-old order mandating appeals to be filed only in the Supreme Court against trial court orders in coal block allotment scam cases, the SC Wednesday said the prosecution and accused can move the Delhi HC challenging acquittals or convictions recorded by the special judge.Taking up the long pending appeals in coal scam cases, a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana said, “Why did the Supreme Court invite such a burden on itself ? There may have been certain concerns at some point of time. But can the Supreme Court denude the high court’s constitutionally conferred powers to hear appeals against trial court orders? Powers of the high court to hear appeals against trial court is part of the basic structure.”Appearing for some of the accused in coal scam cases, senior advocate Kapil Sibal said SC should not be the first forum of appeal against trial court orders. However, SC-appointed special public prosecutor R S Cheema said trials in two-thirds of the cases have been over and that the restraint on approaching the high court against interim orders of the special judge should continue.The bench agreed with Cheema but said that in those cases where the trial court has recorded either conviction or acquittal, the appeal by person or prosecution must challenge it before the Delhi high court. In Sept 2014, Supreme Court had cancelled 204 of the 218 coal block allocations and directed that all appeals against framing of charge, quashing of case and bail petitions must be filed only before the Supreme Court and not Delhi high court.

This restriction was imposed to prevent accused from delaying trials.Sibal, who was a minister in the Congress-headed UPA govt when the coal scam and 2G scam cases rocked its electoral support base, told the court that the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had made an omnibus calculation about alleged loss to exchequer because of the coal block allocations, without quantifying loss attributable to individual coal blocks.“We have challenged the basis on which such calculations were made by the CAG. Moreover, we have also questioned whether mere allotment of coal blocks would amount to corrupt practice without any mining having taken place at all,” Sibal said.The top court asked Cheema and the counsel for accused to help in categorizing the bunch of cases for hearing from Aug 18.