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The Left Front on Monday assailed, what it termed as a “lame duck” statement, of Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on the CAG report that points at dubious coal block allocations and also contended his defence to be “unworthy of a Prime Minister”. Senior Communist Party of India (CPI) leader Gurudas Dasgupta observed that the PM's statement showed that he was uncomfortable with successive CAG reports opening up a trail of corrupt practices by the UPA government. “I call it a 'lame duck' statement, unworthy of a Prime Minister. He has mounted a frontal attack against the CAG, and he is doing it repeatedly, because it is inconvenient for them (Congress party-led federal government), (as) one CAG report after another is unmasking the real character and credibility of the government,” Dasgupta said. Dasgupta also hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for disrupting parliamentary proceedings, saying that the tactic was self-serving in its intention to force early elections. He also accused the BJP and the Congress of fighting the matter out between themselves, eclipsing all other political parties, particularly those in the opposition. “What the BJP is doing to force a mid-term poll is against the interest of the common people, is against the interest of the parliamentary system, is against every fundamental of parliamentarianism. We totally denounce that. Secondly, the Congress appears to be in a mood to impose a bipartite political system, only going to the BJP and talking to them. There is no space for the other people who are there in the Opposition,” he added. Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) politburo member Sitaram Yechury labelled Dr. Manmohan Singh's statement as 'extremely defensive', parts of which included an attempt to shift the blame onto state governments. “It is an extremely defensive statement, and I think it contains many distorted points. We will have occasion to discuss this statement in detail on a subsequent day, but one thing that needs to be (seen) is that the Prime Minister has tried to shift (the blame) onto the states, and to the delay in the lawmaking process, and this delay, (which) we cannot understand, has taken eight years,” Yechury said. He also said that the Left Front was not in support of an all-out auction of coal reserves. On the contrary it has suggested that in order to ensure the people's interest, the coal required for power generation must be set aside, with the rest made available for auction. “In the process of this competitive bidding or auction process, you cannot barter away the interests of the state to private companies, and this is important because every state has a State Electricity Board. They have public sector units (PSUs) producing electricity, so the coal needed for them must be set aside, and the other coal, which Coal India is not able to mine or operate for various reasons-even that is a question-that amount of coal can be auctioned,” opined Yechury. Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh brok his silence on the coal scam, saying that the CAG report would be perused and challenged in parliamentary committees. The government has maintained that it was simply following established policy, and before the report was released, Singh had denied of any wrongdoing.

Left calls PM’s response on coal scam as ‘lame duck’