Coal comfort

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may be close to completing 100 days in power soon but its leaders occasionally struggle to get out of opposition mode, having been in that position for a decade. This was very much in evidence when current minister for coal, power and renewable energy Piyush Goyal was asked to comment on Monday's Supreme Court ruling declaring coal block allocations from 1993 to 2010 illegal. Goyal, who used to be spokesman when the BJP was in the Opposition, appeared to have a hard time concealing his glee since most of the allocations were made when the Congress was in power at the head of various coalition governments. He drew journalists' attention to portions of the Supreme Court ruling - strictly off the record, of course - to show that arguments he had made as opposition spokesman were correct. He also took the trouble to "advise" some journalists to read the judgment properly and then raise questions on the modalities of the working of the two governments. The subtext, of course, is that these shenanigans were a monopoly of the Congress and its allies.