Supreme Court Closes Coal Block Case Against Ex-PM Manmohan Singh

A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana accepted the CBI's closure report giving a clean chit to Manmohan Singh.

29 Jul 2026, 07:36 · www.ndtv.com

The Supreme Court on Wednesday closed a criminal case against former prime minister Manmohan Singh in a coal block allocation case while setting aside a summoning order passed against him.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana accepted the CBI's closure report giving a clean chit to the former PM and others.

Singh, who died in December 2024, now stands formally exonerated in one of the United Progressive Alliance government's most high-profile criminal cases.

The top court said there were no cogent reasons to discard the CBI's closure reports or take cognisance against him.

"We have gone through both the closure reports filed by the CBI with the able assistance of learned senior counsel for the parties. Having regard to the parameters consistently laid down by this court in the matter of acceptance or rejection of an investigation report filed by an investigating agency, we are satisfied that there were no cogent reasons to set aside the closure reports filed by the CBI and take cognisance," the court said.

"Consequently, we allow the appeal and set aside the impugned judgment dated 11 March 2015 and the consequential order summoning the appellant to face trial," the court said.

Singh, industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla, ex-coal secretary PC Parakh and three others were summoned as accused by a special court in a coal scam case pertaining to allocation of Talabira-II coal block in Odisha in 2005.

The Supreme Court, however, intervened and stayed the directive.

Singh questioned the absence of the mandated sanction for prosecuting public officials like him, and denied any criminality in his decision concerning the coal block allocation.

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