JOIN USTaking credit for Parliament passing crucial legislations, senior BJP leader and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj took on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, equating the coalgate scam to a television serial in which every episode offers new mystery.
“Coalgate has become TV serial where one-after-another episode is coming. Every second day in Parliament this issue was raised,” said Swaraj, addressing a joint press conference with party veteran Arun Jaitley after the end of the monsoon session.
Elaborating on her remark, she said, “The first episode of the coalgate serial was when CAG (the Comptroller and Auditor General of India) exposed the allocation of blocks. The second episode was when the CBI draft affidavit was illegally accessed by then law minister Ashwani Kumar, who had to resign after indictment by the Supreme Court. The third episode was when 189 files went missing. The fourth episode came when news reports said a CBI officer wrote on the files that the prime minister should be investigated, as he was the coal minister when the files went missing. Let’s see how many more episodes follow.”
Jaitley, Leader of the Opposition in Rajya the Sabha, also took a dig at Singh for refusing to own up to the missing coal files. “The prime minister says he is not the custodian of files and then leaves the House in a huff, which indicates that the government has no answers to what is happening in coalgate”, he said. Jaitley added that the UPA “government is without credibility”, and lacks leadership.
Swaraj said the party adopted a different strategy this time and decided to use Parliament as a forum for exposiing the blunders of the UPA.
“We were, therefore, extremely keen on utilising both Houses as much as possible for discussing issues dear to the masses,” she said.