The veteran BJP leader said the CAG report was indeed shocking

The veteran BJP leader said the CAG
report was indeed shocking but stories
floating in the industry about the government’s
under-the-table deals were
even more so. One of the stories, he
added, was about the way the ruling
party sent instructions to the ministry
on allocation of coal blocks to a certain
private party.
He stated that such stories might have
been churned out of a rumour mill, but
the fact that there was deliberate delay
that led to losses of thousands of crores
to the exchequer could not be denied.
He said the government was behaving
in a way similar to how it had done in
the wake of the 2G spectrum scam –
washing its hands of all responsibility
and accountability.
Jaitley also lambasted the government
for the lame excuses that many
ministers have been coming out with,
the latest one being Chidambaram’s
downright ludicrous statement that
there had been no loss whatsoever to
the public exchequer in the coal block
allocation because the coal was still in
the womb of mother earth and it had
not been mined due to which there was
no question of any loss.
The BJP leader noted that the base
price for spectrum had been earlier set
at 1,658 crore but had now shot up to Rs
14,000 crore and, therefore, the estimated
loss projected by CAG was not
purely academic and perceived; it was
an actual loss to the public exchequer.
Jaitley also pointed out that the TRAI
chief reported about three bidders for
the spectrum even at the present price
and that too at a time when the telecommunications
industry is in a much more
precarious situation than it was four
years ago.
He expressed regret that the government
attacked the credibility of CAG’s
findings, saying that MPs of ruling party
would eventually ensure that the Public
Accounts Committee and the Joint Parliamentary
Committee were straitjacketed.