Agencies/New Delhi
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday dismissed calls for the resignation of the federal law minister who vetted a police report on alleged graft in awarding coal blocks before it was submitted to the top court.
Singh told reporters in New Delhi there is “no question of the law minister resigning” and declined further comment, saying the matter was “in court and subjudice.”
Singh’s statements came a day after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said Law Minister Ashwani Kumar and officials of the prime minister’s office and coal ministry saw the police report before it went to the Supreme Court.
The disclosure by the federal investigation agency has mired the already scandal-tainted Congress-led government in new controversy and sparked opposition demands for the resignations of both Kumar and Singh.
CBI director Ranjit Sinha said in an affidavit a “status” report on the agency’s probe into the coal allotments was “shared” with Kumar and other government officials “as desired by them” before being given to Supreme Court judges.
The CBI’s report on what India’s media has dubbed “coalgate” is still to be made public.
Playing down the demand for his own resignation, the prime minister attacked the opposition for disrupting the parliament over the issue and said the world was laughing at India because of this.
“This is not the first time...in the last nine years how many times has the opposition demanded my resignation. But I would like to appeal to the opposition that they should let the parliament function. By not allowing parliament to function, we are making a mockery of our system of democracy. The whole world is laughing at us.”
The parliament was the proper forum for debating all issues, Singh said.
“Whatever the issue, these can be debated, discussed and decisions arrived at through proper dialogue in parliament,” he said.
However, Singh refused to comment on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s charge that he was using the law minister to cover himself in the probe into the alleged irregularities in the allocation of coal mines during United Progressive Alliance government’s first term (2004-09).
“I would not like to comment (on this subject). It is a matter which is now before the court and it is subjudice,” he said.
The CBI is probing allegations that the coal blocks were given away at cheap rates instead of being auctioned causing a loss of Rs1.86 lakh crore.
“The government has been caught with its pants down,” said senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley as his colleague Ravi Shankar Prasad reiterated the party’s demand for Kumar’s exit.
Kumar denied any wrongdoing, and his party backed him, rejecting demands for his resignation outright.
“I have done no wrong. The truth will prevail,” the law minister said after an emergency meeting of UPA constituents chaired by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and attended by the prime minister on Friday.
Earlier in the week, a parliamentary panel said the coal blocks allocated between 1993 and 2010 were awarded in a “most non-transparent” manner to a “few fortunates” through the “abuse of power.”
The panel urged the scrapping of the “illegal” allocations of the mines, creating fresh uncertainty in the energy sector which is plagued by shortages as India’s growing economy consumes ever larger amounts of fuel.
Singh, 80, in addition to his job as premier, served as coal minister from 2004-2009 and the opposition has blamed him for many of the allotment irregularities.