Coal scandal paralyses Indian parliament

Indian Parliament was paralysed yesterday for the second day running with non-Left opposition pressing for resignation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the wake of the national auditor's report on an alleged scam in allocation of coal mines.
Both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha witnessed tumultuous scenes with opposition lawmakers targeting ruling Congress by alleging corruption in the allocation of the mines in which the auditor Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has spoken of Rs 1.86 lakh crore ( 33.4 billion dollars) "undue benefit" to private firms, our New Delhi correspondent said.
Upping the ante, India's opposition vowed yesterday to block parliamentary proceedings until the prime minister resigned over the scandal, raising the prospect of more legislative deadlock and stalled reforms amid a faltering economic scenario.
The auditor Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), in its report tabled in Indian parliament last Friday, said the government lost up to Rs 1.86 lakh crores by giving coal fields at a fraction of their value to private firms between 2005 and 2009.
BJP is targeting the prime minister because he was in direct charge of the Coal Ministry for three of these years.
The prime minister has said he is ready to explain the charges in parliament but an adamant BJP said it was not interested in his statement.
Senior opposition leader Arun Jaitley said his Party would obstruct parliamentary proceedings until the 79-year-old Singh took personal responsibility and stepped down, reports AFP.
"The way forward is that the prime minister must accept his culpability. The reason is very obvious. For five out of the eight years (analysed by the auditor)... he himself was the coal minister," Jaitley told the Times Now television channel in an interview as both houses of parliament were adjourned for the second day in row.
India's auditor suggested the government lost billions of dollars by failing to auction valuable coal mining rights in a report that has brought the issue of alleged corruption back to the forefront.
The report did not contain any allegations of corruption or criminal practices and the government accused the CAG, an independent constitutional body, of publishing spurious figures.
Coal Minister Sripraksh Jaiswal has hit back at CAG's findings, saying the government did not agree with the figures or methodology.
"The mechanism adopted for coal allocation was transparent," he countered.
The controversy over allocation of coal mines is the latest in a series of scams that has hit India's Congress-led UPA government since 2010.
Singh, who has seen his reputation as "Mr Clean" damaged by a string of scandals in his second term in government, served as acting coal minister from 2004-2009.
The present standoff over coal mine allocation echoes a fight in 2010 when the national auditor had claimed the under-pricing of mobile phone licences on a first-come-first-served basis instead of an auction had cost the treasury up to $39 billion -- a figure the government rejected.
The then telecom minister A Raja and some other ministry officials have since been put on trial accused of using their powers to twist the process to favour certain private companies.