Coal-gate: BJP MLA lodges complaint against PM

A Bharatiya Janata Party legislator has lodged a complaint at the Kotwali police station in Patna against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, alleging his complicity in allocation of 142 coal blocks in an arbitrary and irregular manner that caused a loss of Rs. 1.86 lakh crore to the treasury.

In the written complaint, the BJP MLA from Patna (Central), Nitin Navin alleged that the prime minister, in his capacity as the then coal minister, adopted wrong process to enable the people close to him to benefit from coal blocks allotment.

The coal blocks allotment process adopted by the Prime Minister indicated his collusion in the scam and his 'corrupt' conduct, he said.

Navin further alleged that the central government had prepared a draft proposal on June 28, 2004, for competitive bidding of coal blocks, but a decision on it was delayed as notification in this regard could be implemented only in February 2, 2012 through an ordinance.

The UPA government deliberately wasted eight years in enacting legislation for competitive bidding of coal blocks so that the people close to the government and ineligible industrialists be allotted coal blocks, the BJP MLA alleged.

During these eight years, the government allotted 142 coal blocks to friends and businessmen close to it as well as to relatives and children of the ministers, he said.

The allottees did not extract coal from the blocks allocated to them and artificially enhanced valuation of their blocks or made huge profit by selling their blocks, the BJP

MLA said.

Meanwhile, Kotwali police station's Station House Officer (SHO) Aman Kumar said that the local police did not have jurisdiction to investigate the allegations levelled against the Prime Minister by the BJP MLA as the coal blocks allotment did not occur here.

He said that he will forward the station diary entry to the CBI which was investigating the coal blocks allotment.