Coal ministry's info missing from RS website

As the stand-off between the government and the Bharatiya Janata Party on the coal block issue continued, answers to Parliamentary questions for the current session related to Coal ministry are missing from the Rajya Sabha website.

While question-answers of all other ministries are uploaded on the website of the upper house, coal ministry related answers for the 226th session are missing. However, only the questions related to coal ministry raised in Parliament in the current session are available on the website.

"Some ministries are prompt in uploading the content and some are not. It is the respective ministry's responsibility to upload the answers on the website," said Rajya Sabha Secretary General V K Agnihotri when asked about the missing information on its website.

Taking note of the absence of the coal ministry related answers on the website, the BJP accused the Congress of trying every possible way to suppress information related to coal block allocations.

"Rajya Sabha website has put on questions and answers of every other ministries on it website but not the August 27 question answers related to Coal Ministry," BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar told reporters outside Parliament.

"I had asked questions on coal block allocations. The written answer on August 27 was that blocks were allocated to companies due to the requirement of manufacturing of steel, cement and generation of power," Javadekar said.

The Rajya Sabha members of Parliament question was that how many companies have started the production after the coal block allocations to them.

"The written answer given to my question no 1551 was that no one has started the production yet. Not even one ton of cement or steel manufactured or one MW of electricity was generated by these companies who had got coal blocks allocated.

"Though I got it in writing, it was not put on the Rajya Sabha website. In fact, no answer of Coal Ministry that day was on the website. There were total 10 questions on coal ministry on that day," he claimed.

"However, the RS website has question answer of all other ministries but not of coal ministry on September 27."

Drawing the attention of Vice-President and Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari, Javadekar said, "I had given him a written complaint about it. He had assured me to look into it."

Taking a dig at the Congress, the BJP leader said "So one thing is clear that Coal Ministry wants to hide this fact. On the one hand Congress is telling us that we are not ready for discussion and on the other hand they are suppressing facts from the public. Our demand is that no department should allow to hide the facts."