Last week, a special CBI court convicted Dilip Ray, Minister of State for Coal in the A B Vajpayee government in 1999, for his alleged involvement in the coal block allocation scandal. Hearings on the quantum of Ray’s sentencing are set to begin on Wednesday, While convicting him, the court observed that Ray “abused his official position”, as his decision of “relaxation of policy without any logical or legal basis amounts to gross abuse of his powers by the minister”.
The case against Dilip Ray
It relates to allocation of a coal block in Giridih district of Jharkhand to a private company in violation of guidelines. Ray represented the BJD then; he later joined the BJP only to quit it in the face of these allegations.
