Mumbai- A court in India has summoned former PM Manmohan Singh over a corruption scandal involving coal mining licences.

Mr Singh has been accused of criminal conspiracy and ordered to appear in court on 8 April.

In 2012, federal auditors said India had lost $33bn (£20bn) because coalfield rights were sold off cheaply.

Last September, India's Supreme Court cancelled almost all the coal mining licences awarded by the government since 1993, saying they were illegal.

Mr Singh's government ran India for a decade until last year.

He has been summoned over the allocation of a coal mining licence to Hindalco Industries in Orissa in 2005, at a time when he was prime minister and also held the coal ministry portfolio.

Also summoned are Hindalco Industries Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla and former coal secretary PC Parakh.

Hindalco declined to comment on Wednesday's court order. A spokesman for Mr Singh's Congress party said "we conducted ourselves with utmost probity and transparency, and the legal process will vindicate us".

India is one of the largest producers of coal in the world and more than half of its commercial energy needs are met by coal.

In its 2012 report into the sale of coalfields, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) - the federal watchdog - said that private and state companies had benefited from the allocations.

Opposition politicians accused the Congress government of "looting the country" by selling coalfields to companies without competitive bidding.

Courtesy BBC News