Column : Time for CAG to audit the states
MK Venu : Aug 29 2012, 00:20 IST
Politically, the BJP appears to have overplayed its hand by boycotting Parliament on the coal allocation controversy. Now the party’s leaders seem to have gone too far and don’t know how to retrace their steps. If the BJP thought some of the UPA allies like the Trinamool Congress and Samajwadi Party would plump for early elections to ride the momentum of their impressive assembly poll victories in 2011 and 2012, respectively, its calculations have gone somewhat awry. The BJP leadership did try to invite some of the UPA allies and non-UPA regional parties like Orissa’s BJD for an all-party meeting on the coal allocation controversy but did not get much response. It is clear that the BJP is getting impatient and is not willing to wait another year and a half to see the UPA out of power. Therefore, there is a tendency to create a political hype which some see as disproportionate to the reality on the ground.
Some BJP leaders even tried to cleverly dovetail the negative sentiment around the “zero loss” theory of the spectrum allocation onto Coalgate, but with not much success so far. The fact is Coalgate will not have the same resonance as the spectrum scam, simply because coal allocation and the decision-making processes around it are quite dispersed across states, many of whom are opposition-ruled. So, the BJP will find it very difficult to stick it all entirely on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. However, the big benefit of Coalgate is that in future states
Previous Story Column : Encouraging the Next Great Thing Next Story FE Editorial : CSR vs exploration
