Unease in corridors after former coal secretary HC Gupta and 2 serving IAS get 2 years jail

THERE has been an unease and anger among many a senior IAS officer in the corridors when a special court in Delhi on Monday sentenced former coal secretary and 1971 batch retired IAS HC Gupta along with two serving IAS officers — KS Kropha, 1982 batch IAS and former joint secretary in coal ministry and present Meghalaya chief secretary, and KC Samria, 1993 batch IAS and the then director in coal ministry — to two years in jail in coal block allocation during the UPA regime. “We need to seriously ponder over the impact of Harish Chandra Gupta judgement on governance in the country”, said…

Retired IAS and former coal secretary HC Gupta who refused to engage lawyers gets bail

IN AUGUST last year, former coal secretary Harish Chandra Gupta who was in jail in corruption cases related to allocation of coal blocks, became almost a hero when the IAS Association and senior IAS officers openly vouched for his honesty, further adding that if Gupta could go to jail, most of the other IAS should also be behind bars. His IAS batch mate of 1971 batch and former chief election commissioner Dr SY Quraishi went a step further, terming Gupta as one of the most honest officers “who lived like a sadhu”. On Tuesday morning, Gupta was…

Who is PC Parakh? Geologist, IAS, coal secretary, whistle-blower, and an accused!

PC Parakh, a 1969 batch retired IAS and former coal secretary, has chosen to take on the Prime Minister now, as he told a national newspaper that PM who had approved the allocation of Talabira coal blocks to Hindalco in 2005, be named as accused No. 1, if that allocation was a conspiracy. PC Parakh who along with Hindalco chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla was named by the CBI in its latest charges-sheet in the ongoing case of coal block allocations, had refrained from hitting out at…

Ex-coal secretary PC Parakh fought to get his official letters out through RTI

PC Parakh as coal secretary (April, 2005 photo)

IN 2009, former coal secretary PC Parakh was fighting a battle at Central Information Commission to access his own communications as coal secretary with then cabinet secretary BK Chaturvedi for the period of 2004-05. He was initially denied those files when he had filed an RTI to the cabinet secretariat. Many believe Parakh’s letters to then cabinet secretary could form the basis of CAG’s key arguments in yet-to-be published report on doling out coal blocks without auction. Last Saturday, the intensity of the PMO’s hard-hitting letter to anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare got diluted as Parakh chose to appear for TV interviews on what’s now known as Coalgate. But who this PC Parakh? In late 1960s, he was a mining geologist working for...