In open letter to PM, Assocham says worried about 'half-baked' cases against Indian Inc
Days after the CBI named billionaire industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla and former coal secretary PC Parakh in the coal scam, industry body Assocham has written a strongly-worded open letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressing concern at what it calls "half-baked cases" being filed against industry leaders.
Signed by Assocham secretary DS Rawat, the letter says, "We find ourselves in a situation where half-baked cases are being slapped against top leaders of the industry and retired bureaucrats based on perceptions, interpretations and mere inferences."
The CBI had last week filed an first information report or FIR, the 14th in its investigation of coal block allocations, alleging that Mr Birla's firm, Hindalco was shown "undue favour" in being granted mining rights for a coal block in Odisha. It has also named Mr Parakh, who it alleges approved the coal block for Hindalco, overruling a screening committee's recommendion, after Mr Birla met him in 2005.
India Inc is up in arms against the CBI move and has warned that such action against a top industrialist will affect investor sentiment at a time that the country faces an economic crisis. Ministers like Anand Sharma and Sachin Pilot have backed that view.
Assocham in its letter written this week, says, "We fail to understand how inferences can be drawn if industry leaders go and meet senior bureaucrats and ministers in full view of the media.... Every citizen in a democracy has a right to influence the government decisions."
The industry body also says, "We find nothing wrong Sir, if a Chief Minister of a State writes to the Prime Minister favouring a particular project. After all, all the projects -private or public belong to the nation and the private individual or entrepreneur has the same right or a charge on the Chief Ministers and the Prime Minister as the public sector entity has."
The reference is to Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, whose letter to the Prime Minister in 2005 on Hindalco's petition for a coal block, is also reportedly being investigated by the CBI. Mr Patnaik has said he had merely forwarded the Hindalco petition to the PM, who also held the coal portfolio at that time.
Much like other industry bodies Ficci and CII, the Assocham warns that an "environment of distrust" will hamper decision making and fears that big projects will not take off because of a "demoralised bureaucracy" and "a shaken entrepreneur".
"We fear that more industrialists could be targets of the CBI probes which in all likelihood would not bring out any substantial evidence of any wrongdoing, but the problem is that the reputation of individual enterprises gets jolted," the letter reads.
The Prime Minister's Office has defended the decision to allocate two coal blocks in Odisha to Hindalco. In a statement released on Saturday, Dr Singh's office said the deal was "entirely appropriate."
