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Hitting back at Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal for accusing Bharatiya Janata Party of killing democracy, senior party leader Yashwant Sinha has said that the country's main opposition party has saved nation's democracy.
"I would like to remind Kapil Sibal that he is a member of the party which indeed had murdered democracy by imposing emergency in this country in 1975, so he has absolutely no right to talk about democracy," Sinha said.
"If democracy today survives in India, it is largely because of the party, which is in the opposition today and largely because of the role and sacrifices made by the leaders of the BJP. So, therefore, Kapil Sibal has no right to talk about democracy. He belongs to party which had sought to destroy democracy in this country," Sinha added.
Sinha also took a dig at Sibal for creating confusion through its ''zero loss'' theory in coal blocks allocation.
"The value and share of the companies who were allocated coal blocks increased; they didn't even bother to dig coal blocks and got huge profits. So talking about zero loss is not right and I am surprised that an intellectual like Kapil Sibal is talking about zero loss," said Sinha.
He also said that such remarks by Sibal have further strengthened the determination of the party to conduct an anti-graft campaign in order to make the country free from anomalies.
"What Kapil Sibal has said has only strengthened our determination to go ahead with this anti-corruption campaign that we have launched. We will not tolerate this kind of corruption and nothing is going to deter us from this. We can save democracy in this country only when this kind of corruption is brought to a halt and those who are guilty will be brought to books," said Sinha.
Taking potshots at the BJP for disrupting parliamentary proceedings over the coal blocks allocation issue, Sibal had alleged that the ''ideology'' used to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi is being used now to ''kill'' Indian democracy.
"The BJP does not think about the nation. It wants to come to power before 2014. It just believes in the ideology of disruption and killing of democracy," he said.
The BJP has held Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who then held direct charge of the coal ministry, responsible for what has been estimated as a notional loss of Rs 1.86 lakh crore by the CAG in coal block allocations, and demanded his resignation.
The CAG report on coal block allocations states that nearly 150 coalfields were allotted to private and state-run firms without transparency and objectivity between 2005 and 2009