Summoned by the government in connection with the coal scam, former Coal Secretary P C Parakh today said it came as a “surprise” to him.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla, Parakh and three others were today summoned as accused by a special court in a coal scam case pertaining to the allocation of Talabira-II coal block in Odisha in 2005 and asked to appear before it on April 8.

“It (summon) came as a surprise to me,” Parakh told reporters here today.

However, he said, “Court has its own method of working and its not appropriate to comment on that.”

When asked whether there were any political reasons to these summons, Parakh said there are no political overtones to it.

Besides these three, the court also summoned Hindalco, its officials Shubhendu Amitabh and D Bhattacharya as accused in the case.

CBI, in its FIR, had named Parakh, Birla, Hindalco Industries Ltd and other unknown persons for alleged offences under Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC and under provisions of the PCA.

However, the agency had later filed a closure report in the court, which had refused to accept it.

The court, in its December 16 order, had directed CBI to examine Manmohan Singh and some top officials of then PMO, including Singh’s then Principal Secretary T K A Nair and then private secretary B V R Subramanyam.

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