Coal scam: Manmohan Singh will stick to facts, feel experts

NEW DELHI: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was surrounded by his family at his Motilal Nehru Marg house soon after he returned from Parliament. His daughters Daman Singh and Upinder Singh rushed there as soon as they heard about the Court issuing summons to him as an accused in the Coal block allocation case. At least two top lawyers were also believed to be there, trying to figure out Singh’s next course of action.

Two former Cabinet ministers Kapil Sibal and Ashwani Kumar were also believed to be in touch with him. According to sources privy to the discussions, Singh has more or less decided to stick to his stand that he simply followed the advice of the coal ministry in allocation of the coal block to Kumar Mangalam Birla. “Singh’s is not likely to ruffle too many feathers in the Congress by deflecting blame on any other senior party functionary. He will simply stick to the facts – Birla went to meet him twice with his application. He forwarded it to the coal ministry and just went by what came on the file from there,” a legal expert, in the groove about the developments, told ET.

Singh had been consulting the finest private lawyers even before his tenure as the PM ended. “After his close aide TKA Nair was questioned by CBI, he knew it was a matter of time before CBI came knocking. Once that happened, he knew that the court could take cognizance. It was not entirely unexpected. He always had this apprehension that his fate could go the Narasimha Rao way. Singh has been working on his defence for some time now,” he added.