New Delhi:
To counter the BJP's unrelenting demands for his resignation, the Prime Minister is expected to seek a trust vote soon to prove he has not lost the confidence of Parliament. He leaves for Iran tomorrow for a four-day trip.
The PM tried today to explain in both Houses that allegations of a coal scam are baseless. As he was shouted out by the BJP, his office posted on Twitter a detailed statement that was also tabled in Parliament. "I wish to say that any allegations of impropriety are without basis and unsupported by the facts," the statement said, challenging the national auditor whose report states that private firms gained windfall benefits of upto 1.86 lakh crores because coal fields were not auctioned, and were given to them at under-valued rates.
(Read statement)The BJP said it rejects his defence. Senior leaders Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj said that the Congress party had benefitted financially from the companies that were assigned coal fields, and that the allocations made to 142 companies must be cancelled immediately. Since last week, the BJP has not allowed Parliament to function, demanding that till the PM resigns, it is not prepared to hear his government's stand on the coal report by the Comptroller and Auditor General. It is not yet clear whether, amid differences from its key allies, the BJP will stick to this strategy for the rest of the session, which ends on September 7.
Dr Manmohan Singh said today that as the minister in charge at the time in question he would take full responsibility for the decision not to switch the government's method of allocating coal fields to an auction system sooner. He also said that he followed the policies introduced and implemented by previous non-Congress governments. As expected, Dr Singh pointed out that, at a meeting in 2005, different state governments - some of them governed by the BJP - had objected to switching to a competitive bidding process. Amending legal and administrative processes, he said, would have caused inordinate delays for an industry hungry for coal at a time when the economy was surging.
"It was the UPA-I government which, for the first time, conceived the idea of making allocations through the competitive bidding route in June 2004," he said in his statement.
The last time coal blocks were allocated under the old system was in 2008. New legislation means that in future allocations will be made by competitive bidding, though the modalities of the process are still being worked out.
While the Comptroller and Auditor General did not indict the Prime Minister's Office in its report, it said that the screening committee that decided who would get coal fields followed a system that lacked transparency. The PM denied this in his statement today.
(With inputs from Agencies)