Logjam persists, BJP blames UPA ‘silence’

With the last week of Monsoon Session of Parliament resuming from Monday, the BJP put the blame on the ruling establishment for the continuing logjam in the House, underlining that while it had made an offer to break the impasse, the government had not come forward to accept the same.

"The NDA has offered to resolve the deadlock if all the allotments made were cancelled and the process whereby the screening committee decided these allocations was subjected to a judicial probe," NDA acting chairman L K Advani wrote in his blog. "The government is not yet prepared for this."

Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj echoed what he said, pointing out that Sonia Gandhi had not got back to her on the BJP's offer to allow Parliament to function.

"I told Soniaji that coal block allocations be cancelled and an independent and fair probe ordered. If you agree to both these demands, then we can start the discussion and Parliament can function," Swaraj said in Mumbai on Sunday.

Swaraj said a CBI inquiry was not sufficient. "We do not want a CBI inquiry. It cannot conduct an independent probe against the Congress," she said, seeking an independent inquiry by a Supreme Court judge.

Swaraj also specified that the above two conditions were merely for allowing Parliament to function and hold a discussion, and that the BJP was not giving up its demand that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh resign.

"We stick to our demand that the Prime Minister should resign accepting moral responsibility," she said, adding that the party would hit the streets on the matter after the Parliament session ends on September 7.

Advani termed Singh's explanation over the coal block allocation issue as "totally unconvincing". "I was intrigued to find that federalism, rightly described by our Supreme Court as one of the basic features of the Constitution and so one which cannot be amended by Parliament, was sought to be blamed by the Prime Minister in his totally unconvincing explanation," Advani wrote in his blog, pointing to the PM citing "reservations supposed to have been voiced" by BJP chief ministers against the competitive bidding route.

... contd.

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