Lalu Prasad Yadav (File photo)
NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court on Monday refused to stay Lalu Prasad Yadav’s trial in the alleged IRCTC scam case and issued notice to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) seeking its reply.The single-judge bench of Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma told Yadav’s lawyers, Kapil Sibal and Maninder Singh, that it would not grant a stay without the CBI’s response and fixed January 14 as the next date of hearing.“Let them (CBI) file a reply. You should have come earlier; you didn’t come. The trial court order was passed earlier,” Justice Sharma said.The CBI’s counsel also sought time to file a reply in the matter.The trial court framed charges against Yadav, a former Union minister and ex-Bihar chief minister, in October last year. Charges were also framed against 13 other accused, including his wife and former chief minister Rabri Devi, and their son Tejashwi Yadav, a former deputy chief minister of the state.The charges relate to alleged irregularities in the award of operational contracts for two Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) hotels to a private firm during the RJD supremo’s tenure as the Union railway minister between 2004 and 2009.In a scathing observation, the trial court had said the land and share transactions in the case were “possibly an instance of crony capitalism fostered in the garb of eliciting private participation” in the Railways’ hotels at Ranchi in Jharkhand and Puri in Odisha. In its chargesheet, the CBI has alleged that a “conspiracy” was hatched between 2004 and 2014, under which BNR hotels of the Indian Railways, located in Puri and Ranchi, were first transferred to the IRCTC and later leased out for operations, maintenance and upkeep to Sujata Hotels Private Limited, a Patna-based firm.The agency further alleged that the tender process was rigged and manipulated, with conditions tweaked to favour Sujata Hotels, a private entity.(With PTI inputs)
