In this context, Union Minister Kapil Sibal today gave a pep talk to Delhi Congress leaders, focusing on various aspects of the issue and asked them to aggressively counter BJP's criticism of the UPA government.
Accusing BJP of trying to "mislead" the people on the issue, he asked why the opposition party was shying away from participating in a debate on coal block allocation.
"In Parliamentary democracy, parliament is the highest forum to debate and discuss any issue. Why they are not allowing the Parliament to function? Why they are not ready for a debate?" he asked.
Sibal said BJP's tactic to disrupt the Parliament has been inspired by electoral calculations and challenged the main opposition party to participate in a debate so that people of the country know about the real position.
He said the policy of allocating coal blocks without bidding has been in place since 1993 and even the NDA government did not bother to reverse it.
Taking an indirect dig at L K Advani, he said the "senior BJP leader is in great hurry" but did not elaborate further.
Asking Delhi Congress leaders to aggressively counter the misleading campaign by the main opposition party, he said a number of chief ministers from BJP-ruled states opposed competitive bidding of coal blocks.
Sibal said competitive bidding would have escalated prices of the coal resulting in rise in power production cost which would have spill-over effect.
Like CAG, the Prime Minister is also a constitutional authority and one must respect his views, he said. "You cannot accuse us without any probe," Sibal was quoted as saying by a DPCC leader.
"BJP does not care about the country. It is doing all these to grab power in 2014," he said.
DPCC president J P Agarwal said corner meetings will be organised across the city to educate people about the details of the issue. "All 140 blocks of the party will hold these meetings," he said.
