POLITICAL BLAME GAME CLOUDS PARLIAMENT - 1

POLITICAL BLAME
GAME CLOUDS
PARLIAMENT


Bharatiya Janata Party member
and Leader of Opposition Arun
Jaitley has declared that his
party will continue to disrupt the normal
functioning of the Parliament as long as
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh does
not put in his papers.
Jaitley did not go so far as to suggest
that the PM was directly involved in the
coal scam in terms of personal corruption,
but the BJP leader said Singh was
morally responsible because he was
heading the coal ministry and everything
was happening right under his
nose. Therefore, Jaitley added, even if the
PM was passive in letting some private
parties gain unfair advantage, there was
enormous amount of loss to public exchequer
and that amounted to corruption.
Jaitley said the PM was majorly responsible
for delaying the execution of a
government policy that was already put
in place on paper. The opposition leader

pointed out that despite the government’s
having announced in mid-2004
about the allocation of coal blocks
through competitive bidding on the
grounds that there were a lot of big projects
from private parties on the anvil,
there was a delay of more than half a
decade in executing it.
Jaitley rebuffed the government’s
claim that the delay happened due to
opposition from state governments and
other political parties, including the BJP.
He noted that only a handful of state
governments had expressed opposition
to the government’s proposal and the
government was only using it as a lame
excuse, because it could have easily
gone with the majority decision, which
it eventually ended up doing anyway.
Besides, Jaitley pointed out, except in
case of a few minor minerals, over which
the state governments had jurisdiction,
decisions regarding all the major minerals
in the country rested with the central
government.