Balmuchu hapless in defence

Jharkhand Congress MP and State party president Pradeep Balmuchu assumed the mien and argument of a Coal Minister to defend the UPA Government and Union Minister Subodh Kant over controversial coal block allotments and subsequent reports of the CAG. He did it quite poorly though.

Balmuchu, who is said to be lobbying for the Coal Ministry, defended the UPA and Sahay from a factually erroneous premise at a Press conference on Friday. “The BJP has stalled the Parliament over the CAG report on coal block allotments…and the authenticity of the report is still to be verified. The BJP’s decision to stall Parliament is under question because all such recommendations for coal block allotments were made by non-Congress and BJP-led State Governments. The Coal Ministry merely approved these recommendations,” Balmuchu said.

While BJP sought to force Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to resign, Balmuchu demanded that CMs of BJP-ruled States resign on moral grounds for making coal block recommendations to companies, on the basis of which the Ministry allotted them.

“The screening committee rarely turns down recommendations made by State Governments. BJP-ruled States made maximum recommendations. The Central Government allocated all these coal blocks on auction basis. It was done in the economic interest of the country since most allocations were for power, steel and cement. A total of 57 blocks were allocated under this process,” he claimed.

Questioning the CAG report and its estimated Rs 1.86-lakh crore loss to the exchequer out of such allotments, Balmuchu was at his best with arithmetic and political fallacy.

“Where does the question of loss come? Out of 57 coal blocks, exploration of only one block has been started. The BJP does not want to discuss these things in Parliament. If they have facts, they must place it before the country,” he said. 

What Balmuchu said was truth in inverted form, or he probably went horribly wrong in understanding an auction and recommendation. Out of 70 coal blocks allotted during 2006 and 2009, the Centre did not follow process in 57 cases. The BJP has been alleging that the Centre allotted blocks on recommendation basis against the advice of the Union Law Ministry.

To prickly posers from mediapersons about Coalgate, Balmuchu begged off and summed up, saying he relied on the best of his information. He claimed a clean chit for his party and the Government, which have both been passing through one of their worst political phases.

However, he then had to defend his political rival Sahay, who is now at the centre of the controversy, for keeping the PM and his office in the dark while writing a letter of recommendation for coal blocks to SKS Ispat & Power, where his younger brother Sudhir is a stakeholder.

“The Delhi High Court has already disposed of this matter. It gave a clean chit to Sahay over the allegation that he had connections with SKS Ispat. Recommending any company is not wrong because he is a public representative. It can’t be proved that the said company got coal block just because of the Minister’s recommendation. I am not aware whether he or his brother has any connection with the company.”

Meanwhile, Sahay, in Delhi, accepted that Sudhir was honorary executive director of the company, a fact which he had been denying. Both Sahay and Balmuchu underwent a rigorous media grilling, causing deep discomfiture. But there may be a silver lining in it for Balmuchu — his political bête noir landing in a crisis.