Supreme Court Exonerates Manmohan Singh in Coal Block Allocation Case

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of India concluded the legal proceedings involving former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh concerning the coal block allocation scandal, nearly two years after his passing. The court accepted the closure reports submitted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and annulled a 2015 trial court order that had summoned Singh as an accused. Chief Justice Surya Kant, leading the bench, noted that the legal actions had become irrelevant following Singh's death in December 2024. Furthermore, the court took the initiative to review the case's merits, ultimately determining that there was no valid reason to dismiss the CBI's closure reports regarding Singh.

The case in question revolved around the allocation of the Talabira-II coal block in Odisha and was part of the larger coal block allocation controversy, commonly referred to as the "coal scam" or "Coalgate." This controversy sparked significant political upheaval and led to numerous investigations and legal proceedings over alleged misconduct in coal block allocations that occurred between 1993 and 2010. The Supreme Court had previously canceled a substantial number of coal block allocations in 2014, labeling the allocation process as arbitrary and unlawful. In its recent ruling, the Supreme Court endorsed the CBI's position that there was inadequate evidence to pursue charges against Singh, emphasizing that after reviewing the closure reports and the legal standards for accepting or rejecting such reports, it found "no cogent reasons" for the special CBI court to have dismissed the agency's findings.