A good 10 days after the Comptroller and Auditor-General’s (CAG) report on allocation of coal blocks was tabled in Parliament, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has been under direct attack from the Opposition, finally broke his silence.

“The observations of the CAG are clearly disputable,” the Prime Minister said in his statement in Parliament amid rising Opposition din.

Later, outside Parliament, a rather emotional Manmohan Singh told reporters: “My silence is better than a thousand answers. If I start answering then it will throw up several more questions which will beg answers.”

“…I ardently wish that I should be given the opportunity to speak in Parliament, and also to the public at large, and take them into confidence, but I am sorry that the House is not allowed to function, and that the BJP is determined to disrupt the normal functioning of Parliament,” he said.

He said by making this statement he was departing from the established procedure where issues raised in the CAG report are discussed in the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which then submits its report to the Speaker and that report is then discussed in Parliament.

This was done because “the nature of the allegations that are being made and because I was holding the charge of Coal Minister for a part of the time covered by the report… as the Minister in-charge, I take full responsibility for the decisions of the Ministry. I wish to say that any allegations of impropriety are without basis and unsupported by the facts.”

BJP: PM must own responsibility

The day saw the Prime Minister, supported by his Cabinet colleagues, adopting an aggressive posture against the BJP, which remained adamant, and refused to participate in any debate. The Prime Minister’s statement is an assault both on constitutionalism and constitutional authority, the party said. The Leaders of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, respectively, said the statement was a “defiance” of ethics in governance and polity and sought immediate cancellation of the allocations. They also urged the Prime Minister to own moral responsibility and resign.

The Prime Minister reiterated that the policy of allocation of coal blocks to private parties, which the CAG has criticised, was not a new policy introduced by the UPA Government. It had existed since 1993 and previous governments had also allocated coal blocks in precisely the manner that the CAG has now criticised, he added. His statement listed 32 points countering every allegation.

The CAG report mentions that the delay in introduction of competitive bidding rendered the existing process beneficial to a large number of private companies — a financial gain of about Rs 1.86 lakh crore to private parties. This, according to the Government, was disputable. “Even if we accept CAG’s contention that benefits accrued to private companies, their computations can be questioned on a number of technical points,” the Prime Minister said.

Defence team

Not to let go of the momentum gathered by the Prime Minister’s statement, the Government’s defence team — Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Telecom and HRD Minister Kapil Sibal and I&B Minister Ambika Soni — in a press conference rejected allegations made by Sushma Swaraj that “the corruption money out of the scam has gone to the Congress treasury.” They also ruled out bringing a Confidence Motion in Lok Sabha or sine die adjournment of Parliament.

They also dismissed allegations that criticism of CAG’s findings in the Prime Minister’s statement was breach of any authority by saying fair criticism of Constitutional authorities was permitted.

>richa.mishra@thehindu.co.in

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