A special court on Wednesday fixed August 17 to hear a coal scam case in which the Supreme Court has stayed the summons issued against former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla and others. The case came up for hearing before Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar, who deferred the matter as the operations of order passed by him summoning Manmohan Singh, Birla and others as accused have been stayed by the apex court. The special court had on December 16 last year refused to accept the CBI's closure report filed in the case and had directed the agency to further investigate the matter and examine the former premier and other PMO officials. CBI had later filed a supplementary final report in the court, which had on March 11 summoned Singh, Birla, former Coal Secretary P C Parakh, Hindalco Industries Ltd and two top officials Shubhendu Amitabh and D Bhattacharya in the case pertaining to allocation of Talabira-II coal block in Odisha in 2005. The apex court on April 1 had stayed the trial court order summoning them as accused and the proceedings before it. In his plea filed in the apex court, Singh had contended that the trial court had exceeded its jurisdiction by attributing criminality in administrative decisions of the Prime Minister, who was also holding the Coal portfolio then. The plea had said the trial court's decision to summon the former Prime Minister was a "grave mistake both in law" and "understanding of evidence".
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