Coalgate: PM questions CAG, dares BJP to have debate in Parliament

PTI

New Delhi, 27 Aug 2012: As BJP disrupted Parliament on the coal block issue, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday attacked the party and dared it to have a debate in the House to let the country judge the truth.

Soon after he was disallowed to complete a statement he made in both Houses, he talked to reporters outside Parliament House, asserting that the government has a "strong and credible case" on the coal block allocations, which has come under criticism from the CAG.

"I am sorry that the House is not allowed to function and the BJP is determined to disrupt the proceedings of Parliament. I wish to assure the country that we have a very strong and credible case," Singh said.

The Prime Minister said his policy is to maintain silence on "motivated" issues but this is one occasion where he "ardently wished" that he should be given the opportunity to speak to Parliament and to the public at large.

Singh said the CAG’s conclusions on the coal block allocations were "disputable".

"The observations of CAG are disputable and they will be challenged when the matter comes before the Parliamentary Accounts Committee," Singh said.

He argued that a debate should take place in Parliament and the country can judge where the truth lies.

"Once again I appeal to the Opposition to come back to the House to debate on these issues and let the country judge where the truth lies," Singh said.

He recited an Urdu couplet to drive home his point on his silence till now on the controversy.

"Hazaron jawabo se achchi hai Khamoshi meri, Na jaane kitne sawalo ki aabru rakhe." (My silence is better than a thousand answers, it keeps intact the honour of innumerable questions).

Earlier, dubbing CAG’s computation of loss of Rs 1.86 lakh crore in coal block allocation as "flawed" and "misleading", Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took the battle to the opposition camp, blaming it for thwarting the Centre’s effort to shift to competitive bidding.

Making a statement in both Houses of Parliament amid uproar created by BJP members, Singh refused to be on the back foot, declaring that he takes "full responsibility" for the decisions taken as he contended that CAG’s "observations" are "clearly disputable".

With BJP creating disruptions, he read out a few portions of his four-page statement before laying it in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha which were repeatedly adjourned because of uproar.

Conscious that the CAG reports are normally discussed in detail in the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament where the ministry concerned responds, Singh said he was departing from this established procedure "because of the nature of the allegations that are being made and because I was holding the charge of coal minister for a part of the time covered by the report."

Responding point-by-point to the CAG’s observations, the Prime Minister said even if the government auditor’s contention that benefits accrued to private companies were accepted, "their computations can be questioned on a number of technical points."

He asserted that aggregating the "purported gains" to private parties "merely on the basis of the average production costs and sale price of CIL ( Coal India Limited) could be highly misleading."

As coal blocks were allocated to private companies only for captive purposes for specified end-uses, he said, it would not be appropriate to link the allocated blocks to the price of coal set by CIL.

Meanwhile, senior BJP leader and former deputy chairman of Rajya Sabha Najma Heptullah said the Prime Minister’s statement should not be considered by Parliament as there was no "order" in both the Houses when they were laid.

"According to me no statement was made today. When the House is not in order, the proceeding is not on record", she told reporters outside Parliament.

"I have been deputy chairman for 18-19 years. I have said this repeatedly and today also I told the deputy chairman that...it is a rule, a convention and a record that if House is not in order, than no proceeding should not come to record," she said to buttress her point.

Further, she accused the government of adopting two yardsticks as it allowed former telecom minister A Raja to resign following CAG report on 2G allocation but is shielding the prime minister on the coal allocation scam.