Coal Scam: Ex-NDA Minister Dilip Ray Convicted

Former Union minister Dilip Ray was on Tuesday convicted by a special court in Delhi for a coal scam case pertaining to irregularities in the allocation of a Jharkhand coal block in 1999.

Special Judge Bharat Parashar convicted Ray, former minister of state (coal) in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, for criminal conspiracy and other offenses, a PTI report stated.

The court also convicted two senior officials of the Ministry of Coal at that time, Pradip Kumar Banerjee and Nitya Nand Gautam, Castron Technologies Ltd (CTL), its director Mahendra Kumar Agarwalla and Castron Mining Ltd (CML), it said.

The court will hear arguments on the quantum of sentence on October 14.

"While discussing the role of Dilip Ray for the offence under section 13 (1) of PC Act, it has already been concluded that he acted with a dishonest and malafide intention and that too in clear violation of the unambiguous provisions of law. It clear that Dilip Ray dishonestly facilitated the allocation of the abandoned non-nationalised coal mining area in favour of company CTL and that too in violation of the direction of law," the court said.

According to a Hindustan Times report, 66-year-old Ray is a hotel tycoon and one of the founding members of the Biju Janata Dal in the 1990s and in 2002. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha that year as an independent candidate. He joined the Congress in 2004 but left in 2008. In 2009, he joined the BJP and was elected as an MLA from the Rourkela assembly constituency in 2014. Ray quit BJP in November 2018 after the Central Bureau of Investigation charge-sheeted him in 2016 in the Brahmadiha coal scam case.