Cash for coal blocks: BJP hints at payoffs for Congress

The Bharatiya Janata Party has stepped up its offensive against the UPA government and the Congress, with leaders pounding away at the “criminal liability” of the Prime Minister in the coal block allocations, and hinting that the allocations were tied to political payoffs for the Congress. “Disturbing information has surfaced that a valuable public resource was being allocated arbitrarily with the underlying condition of political funding of the party in power,” senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley noted in a signed commentary on Sunday. Citing unidentified bureaucrats who who were in service at the time that the allocation of coal blocks were made, and applicants who applied for the coal blocks, Jaitley noted that they information they have given out shows that the allocations revealed “inefficiency, lack of leadership, and delay in the exercise of power for colourable purpose.” “Over eight years were wasted in not implementing the competitive bidding policy so that 142 successful entrepreneurs could be arbitrarily selected,” Jaitley added. “The Screening Committee mechanism was a farce. Individual writ of a few people who were running the Government influenced the decision.” [caption id=“attachment_425948” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The BJP is going for the jugular. PTI[/caption] More significantly, Jaitley said, “some of the Ministers of State did not come out with any credit. Their role in these allotments appears to be dubious.” Successful applicants, he said, were asked to associate one or more co-allottees by the Ministry. “These were inevitably political nominees.” In this context, Jaitley noted, “disturbing information has surfaced that a valuable public resource was being allocated arbitrarily with the underlying condition of political funding of the party in power.” Officials in the Prime Minisster’s Office who dealt with the Coal Ministry files “were not unaware of what was going on. Many allottees were traders and not actual users. Several allotments have been made without the recommendation of the State Governments. The whole process of allocation of coal blocks stinks.” Simultaneously, BJP leader Yashwant Sinha told CNN-IBN that the Prime Minister had “criminal liability” to face up to in the allocation of coal blocks, and that the BJP would not yield ground on its demand for his resignation. “There is a criminal liability and there is a moral constitutional accountability,” Sinha told Karan Thapar on the Devil’s Advocate show. “What we are demanding today of Prime Minister is to resign on the issue of morality, on the issue of accountability. It now appears that the monsoon session of Parliament, which is to end on 7 September, will be washed out in its entirety. The BJP’s forceful stand was articulated  by Jaitley, who said that the party would not give up its offensive and yield to the Congress suggestion to debate the coal blocks issue in Parliament. Jaitley said that the suggestions that the issue should be debated only in the Parliament “will put a lid on one of the greatest scandals in Indian history.” “We, in the Opposition, are not interested in merely the issue being talked out through a one-day debate in Parliament,” he added. Party sources have said that the BJP will not go back on its demand for Manmohan Singh’s resignation and would not allow Parliament to function even if it stood alone on the demand. Jaitley also accused the UPA government of being “arrogant and despotic” in the matter of “arbitrary and discretionary” allocation of 142 coal blocks. “It has been suggested that since the Prime Minister himself was the Coal Minister, we should assume that this decision was fair,” Jaitley noted. “The Prime Minister’s office is a sacred institution in Indian democracy. It has to be judged by standards much harsher than those which would apply to Ministers like Shri A Raja.”