PM slams BJP’s ‘politics of disruption’, to act on coal row

STRONGLY attacking what he called the BJP's politics of disruption, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Friday said the opposition's strategy to obstruct risked distracting the government from focusing on the country's problems including the economic slowdown.

Singh invoked the fundamentals of parliamentary democracy - debate and discussion - as he castigated the main opposition party for wasting an entire session of Parliament over the CAG report on coal block allocations. He said the government had been ready to discuss the issue in the Public Accounts Committee as well as in both houses of Parliament.

He also asserted that the government had no intention of sweeping under the carpet issues raised

in the CAG report and said they would not only be discussed in Parliament but "corrective action" would be taken if required.

"We do incalculable damage to the reputation of India's Parliament if we resort to disruption of Parliament to make a political point," Singh said in astatement, entitled 'Message to the Nation', released after the monsoon session of Parliament ended Friday.

"If this thought process is allowed to gain momentum, it will be a grave violation of parliamentary politics as we have understood." The prime minister said the country is passing through an "exceptionally difficult phase" with many internal and external problems and challenges.

"There are problems of communal tension, ethnic violence and the ever present threat of Naxalism. Terrorism remains a serious threat...these are some of the issues that should have been discussed in Parliament so that our countrymen could have been better informed of these problems and ways of addressing them," he said.

Singh said there were major economic challenges too. "We must work hard to ensure that the Indian economy returns to high growth. I have no doubt we can do it," he said. "We cannot do this if the government is constantly distracted by the actions of those who prefer obstruction over discussion."

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