Coal gate : PM likely to make a statement today
New Delhi: The Prime Minister Manmohan singh is likely to make a statement today on the coal allocation issue, which has cost the country four days of Parliament functioning, a loss of Rs. 8 crore. With the BJP seeming determined to disrupt Parliament today too, Dr Manmohan Singh, who leaves for a two-day trip to Iran tomorrow, is likely to table his statement in House.
Dr Singh and his party, the Congress, have repeatedly offered a statement on what is being called “Coal-gate,” but the BJP still says it will accept nothing short of the PM’s resignation for allegedly allowing private firms to gain thousands of crores because they were sold hugely under-priced coal fields.
Ahead of an all-party meeting called by Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar to try and break the impasse in Parliament today, the BJP is attempting to consolidate the opposition against the government. It has managed to bring around ally Janata Dal (United) to support a prolonged disruption of Parliament; the JD(U) had earlier said it favoured debate on the coal allocation issue in House.
The consolidation effort included an attempt to split UPA-friendly parties. The BJP invited Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party and Mayawati, who leads the Bahujan Samaj Party, among others, for a meeting that it has called today to discuss strategy on “Coal-Gate”. Both Mr Yadav and Ms Mayawati have said no, thank you.
While that is cause for some relief for the government, it has a tough task in hand to get Parliament to function in the Monsoon session. The BJP is refusing to budge and the prospect of a complete washout of the session looms large. The month-long session ends on September 8.
Calling the government “arrogant and despotic”, senior party leader and Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley wrote on his party’s website yesterday that, “The arbitrary and discretionary allocation of 142 coal blocks is the latest albatross round the neck of the UPA Government. The arrogant and despotic government did not realize when the allocations were made that it would be held accountable for each of these coal block allocations.”
A day before he wrote that, Mr Jaitley made a vitriolic attack on the Congress, alleging that the party received political funding from coal allocation. The coal controversy is pivoted on a report by the national auditor which said that private players got ‘windfall gains’ of upto 1.86 lakh crores between 2005 and 2009 because they were not made to bid for coal fields. Instead, they were allotted coal fields at a fraction of their value. Because the PM was Coal Minister for a part of this period, the BJP says the alleged swindle – being investigated now by the CBI – took place on his watch.
“If the process of allocation by the Prime Minister as a Coal Minister smacks of arbitrariness it shakes our national conscience. The onus is now on the Prime Minister to accept the responsibility for what has happened,” said Mr Jaitley.
