Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram, at a joint press conference along with Coal Minister Sriparkash Jaiwal and Minister of Law and Justice Salman Khursheed said that if the Bhartiya Janata Party continues to disrupt Parliament and refuses to hear Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, "Then we would have to find out alternatives to address the people of India through the media to put forward our point of view."
The party has been demanding the PM's resignation on the grounds that he was the coal minister during United Progressive Alliance-I when the losses of 1.86 lakh crore took place.
"I hope the BJP would not disrupt the two Houses on Monday and listen to the prime minister's reply," he said.
Talking about the losses incurred by the government for wrongly allocating coal blocks to 57 companies, Chidambaram said, "If the mining has not been done in 56 cases, then where are the losses as it has been is being made out by the BJP?"
Jaiswal said, "It is to be reiterated that such availability of coal were required to be expeditiously. Fifty-seven blocs have been allocated, and only one has started working. Twenty have been deregulated. Some have been sent notices and other have been been sent advisories."
He said each allocation has a penalty clause. The government wanted to have a new policy of coal block allocation by auction but the chief ministers of Rajasthan, West Bengal, Chattigarh, Odisha and Jharkhand expressed reservations and sent their objections to the Centre in writing through their chief secretaries.
"Now they have come on board," Jaiswal said.
