Chidambaram

New Delhi, Aug. 24: The Centre today fielded a victorious P. Chidambaram to convey the message that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will speak to the country directly if the BJP does not show the courtesy of listening to him after campaigning for his ouster.

The finance minister, who had just been given a clean chit by the Supreme Court in the 2G case (see Page 6), said: “It is sad the government can’t respond to the charges made by the Opposition and we have to create platforms to convey our views despite Parliament being in session.”

Chidambaram added: “The Prime Minister is ready to answer every question regarding the coal allocation. He is ready with a statement. We want a discussion. If the BJP does not allow Parliament to function on Monday and even afterwards, we have to find a way so that the Prime Minister can speak to the people.”

Along with law minister Salman Khurshid and coal minister Sriprakash Jaiswal, Chidambaram was briefing reporters on behalf of the group of ministers on media.

Taking an aggressive posture, the senior ministers firmly rejected the CAG’s accounting process and blamed the coal-bearing states for blocking the idea of auction mooted by the Prime Minister.

Chidambaram introduced an ingenious logic: “We attempted to change the existing policy, though it took time as, in a federal structure, you can’t ride roughshod over states. The NDA didn’t bring the bidding proposal. We are being blamed for trying to make the system more transparent. If we did nothing, it was fine. Is this the kind of discourse we want in our country?”

The law minister also said the policy could have been changed to enforce auction through an administrative order, but the government wanted to change the law to be on a sounder legal footing.

The ministers stressed that while coal-bearing states such as Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Bengal and Madhya Pradesh strongly opposed auctions, the lignite-bearing Rajasthan, too, sang the same tune.

Chidambaram contested the charge that the Centre bulldozed its way in other matters, recalling how VAT was brought in only after majority of states agreed, goods and service taxes (GST) and NCTC were in cold storage because the states did not agree, land acquisition bill was delayed for want of consensus and the FDI in retail was still to see the light of the day. Minerals, he said, lied in the territories owned by states, royalty went to them and they had the decisive say in allocations and hence their views could not be ignored.

Although the ministers did not criticise the CAG, they firmly disagreed with its calculation. Chidambaram said: “If the coal is not mined, where is the loss?”

Asked if he was repeating the zero-loss theory that was forwarded by Kapil Sibal in the 2G scam, he shot back: “Don’t put words in my mouth. I said the question of loss or gain arises if coal is taken away from the mother earth and sold. Only one of the 57 blocks has got operational so far.”

Chidambaram, however, did take an indirect dig at the CAG. “Thanks to the rising prosperity, we are all enamoured of numbers, ranging from six to nine digits.”

Asked why the CBI investigating coal allocations if no wrong had been committed, Chidambaram said: “It is nobody’s case that implementation of a right policy won’t lead to wrong allocations.”

Jaiswal explained: “The CVC received some complaints and wanted a CBI probe. The government concurred. Some companies might have given wrong facts, filed faulty returns. The CBI is looking into those things and action will be taken. In 2009, we had sent notices to several parties and de-allocated blocks when irregularities were found.”