Baba Ramdev addresses a news conference in New Delhi yesterday
IANS/New Delhi

Yoga guru Baba Ramdev yesterday sought the resignation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over a huge presumptive loss to the exchequer in coal blocks allocation and announced fresh protests against the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government from October 2.
Ramdev hinted that the protests would start from Himachal Pradesh which together with Gujarat will hold assembly elections by the end of this year.
The yoga guru’s campaign against the government will continue until the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Ramdev alleged that the Congress had created a record in corruption, and now “the government is exposed.”
“About 142 coal blocks containing over 50bn tonnes of coal worth Rs200 lakh crore were allocated to firms related to the Congress or to those who paid heavy brokerage to the party without auction,” he said.
“If the PM, who is responsible for corruption worth Rs200 lakh crore, is honest then who is dishonest,” Ramdev asked at a press conference here.
He said the amount involved in the scam was much more than Rs1.86 lakh crore estimated by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), and demanded that the licences issued for coal blocks be cancelled.
Asked why he was targeting only Congress and not the Bharatiya Janata Party whose state governments were also named in the CAG report, he said: “There are many political parties involved in this. But the Congress is in power and it has got the gold medal for scams.”
The yoga guru said he would not join politics. “It’s not our agenda,” he added.
Blaming the Congress for trying to defame him, Ramdev said the UPA government was conspiring against his ashram and trust.
“The government is using the state machinery to harass me and my aides.”
“Some people tried to bribe the people of our ashram to defame us. We are not blaming any particular person but have evidence to prove our claims. We have lodged an FIR (First Information Report) based on the evidence,” Ramdev said.
The income tax department recently decided to cancel the registration of Baba Ramdev’s trust Patanjali as a charitable organisation and reportedly withdraw all exemptions granted to it.
“There are over five lakh charitable organisations in the country... Why is that our ‘seva’ is being termed as a business,” asked Ramdev.