BHUBANESWAR: The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a special leave petition seeking to summon Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in the Talabira II coal block allocation case, the petitioner's lawyer said here.
The bench of Justice V. Gopal Gowda and Justice C. Nagappan also imposed a fine of Rs.1 lakh on the petitioner. "The apex court said that the petitioner has no locus standi to file the petition. The court also imposed a fine of Rs.1 lakh," Suresh Tripathy, counsel of petitioner N.K.Sahu, told IANS.
In his petition filed on March 11, Sahu had told the apex court that a special Central Bureau of Investigation court had summoned former prime minister Manmohan Singh, industrialist Kumar Manglam Birla and former coal secretary P.C.Parakh but Patnaik was not summoned.
He sought that summons be issued to the Odisha chief minister on the grounds that it was his letter to the central government that had tilted the scales in favour of Birla's Hindalco in the allocation of the Talabira II coal block in Sundargarh district, despite it being already allocated to central PSU Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC).
Patnaik had written to Manmohan Singh in 2005 seeking to allocate the Talabira II coal block to Hindalco. The apex court has already stayed the summons issued by the special court to Manmohan Singh.