India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Ravi Shankar Prasad has held Prime Minister Manmohan Singh accountable for the unlawful allocation of coal blocks. He asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) whether it would interrogate the latter in connection with the scam. Prasad said the Prime Minister is directly responsible for the coal block allocations to the kin of lawmakers. "The names of lawmakers of Congress, a senior leader and minister from RJD, a minister from DMK has emerged in connection to coal block allocation. The Prime Minister is accountable for these unlawful allocations because it was after his agreement that these coal blocks were allocated," said Prasad. "During the probe of 2G scam, the CBI did not question either Manmohan Singh, his secretary Nayyar or Chidambaram, but they did interrogate Jaswant Singh. Will the CBI question Singh over the coal scam as he had the sole charge of the ministry and if not then it is evident that the apex investigating agency is gearing up to cover up the coal scam probe," he added. BJP spokesperson Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi also appeared to be in tune with Prasad, and demanded the Prime Minister's resignation for failing to perform his moral responsibility. "We think that the Prime Minister should immediately resign and he has proven to be the leader of corruption and scams. It is his moral responsibility to take the charge of all the corruption and scams committed during his governance or else the country is gearing up for a mass agitation, as people are enraged. No appeals would be made now; the country will witness a revolution," he said. Another BJP leader C.P. Thakur reiterated his party's demand for the cancellation of the coal blocks allocation. "Slowly and steadily, the names of the people will be come into limelight who were involved with the allocation of coal blocks. All their allocations should be cancelled. Our demand is that the coal blocks allocation should be cancelled and then we will have discussions," he said. The BJP is firm on its demand for the resignation of Dr. Singh since he headed the Coal Ministry between 2006 and 2009, when many of the sales occurred. However, Dr. Singh had rejected the CAG's observations as 'misleading' and 'flawed', and blamed the opposition parties for thwarting the efforts of his government to bring a policy of competitive bidding. Dr. Singh also ruled out any possibility of quitting as Prime Minister despite the BJP firm on its demand for his resignation over the coal blocks allocation issue. Meanwhile, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Ram Kripal Yadav refused to comment on the ongoing row over the allocation of coal blocks, and said that his party would wait and watch for the final report. "Investigations are being conducted done in full swing and we should wait and see what happens. Several people are being questioned. According to preliminary reports in the newspapers, several people have been accused. Investigations are on and only few people have been named," said Yadav. "We cannot blame anyone only if his or her name has been identified. I do not have any information on this matter specially and therefore I would not like to comment on this," he added. The CBI had earlier on Tuesday registered multiple FIRs against five companies for alleged criminal conspiracy to get coal blocks. The CBI has listed the names of the kin of RJD leader PremChand Gupta, who had applied for a coal block when he was the Union Minister for Corporate Affairs and bagged it about a month after his tenure ended along with that of his government.

BJP questions CBI's role: Coal blocks allocation scam