'Changes made in coal report after meeting with Law Min'

New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will tell the Supreme Court on Tuesday that changes were made in the status report on the coal block allocation scam after a meeting between the probe agency and Law Minister Ashwani Kumar, sources said. The probe agency is not going to hide anything from the apex court, according to CBI sources.

The CBI had on Friday filed its affidavit on the coal block allocation scam report with the Supreme Court, in which agency's director Ranjit Sinha had said that the draft report was shared with the Law Minister, a charge the Congress has been rejecting. The director had also said the draft of the report was even shared with the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and Coal Ministry officials.

CBI is set to submit both the status reports to the Supreme Court on Tuesday in a sealed envelope, sources said. In March, the probe agency had said in its status report that many companies were given coal blocks through false representations and that there was no rationale for allocation of the blocks. The Supreme Court had ordered the CBI not to share the report with the government. It has also asked the Centre to explain why a small group of companies were favoured.

The government is likely to say that any meeting between the CBI and the Law Ministry happened before that assurance. The CBI in its affidavit had said that Kumar and two officials in the PMO and the Coal Ministry had seen its first status report.