"Our party, along with CPI, CPI(M) and TDP today decided to stage dharna in front of Parliament tomorrow to demand an inquiry into the coal block allocation scam by a sitting Supreme Court judge," SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav told reporters here.
CPI(M) leader Basudeb Acharia said he had spoken to the leaders of BJD and AIADMK "who said they will also participate in tomorrow's dharna", adding that members of CPI(M), CPI, RSP, Forward Bloc, SP, TDP, BJD and AIADMK would join the protest sit-in at the Parliament House complex tomorrow.
"Our attempt is to unite non-NDA, non-UPA parties to demarcate ourselves from BJP and Congress, both of which are involved in corruption relating to mining and therefore do not want a debate in Parliament," he said.
Acharia said the BJP had also made similar allocation of coal blocks in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, apart from the mining scam in Karnataka.
He attacked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for "concealing a lot" in his statement in Parliament and said "many allocations were made when the PM was in charge of the Coal Ministry. ... All auctions were done in an irregular manner."
Acharia's party colleague Sitaram Yechury said "the BJP is as keen on not having a debate as is the Congress. Lot of things will come out of the cupboard. That's why I said it was match-fixing".
After the meeting with Acharia, Gurudas Dasgupta (CPI) and N Nageshwar Rao (TDP), the SP chief said,"we want a probe into it and the guilty should be punished. We want Parliament to function so that we can debate these important issues." (MORE)