Former Cabinet Minister and BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad on February 9 denounced the Congress’s 10-year regime from 2004 to 2014, saying that their then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was an accused of the coal scam, during a debate in the Lok Sabha on the ‘white paper’ on the Indian economy.
His attack on Mr. Singh came a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed him for his commitment to democracy in the course of the farewell address to retiring Rajya Sabha members.
In a 25-minute long speech, Mr. Prasad accused the Congress governments in Rajasthan and Haryana of handing over acres of land worth several crores to Vadra, terming it as a “new model of entrepreneurship”. He spoke at length about spectrum allocation, where he said that the “first come, first serve” model was flawed since artificial impediments were introduced to stop some from coming first.
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Speaking on the coal allocation scam, he asked the Congress, “Isn’t your Prime Minister an accused in the coal scam?” This led to an uproar, drawing protests from the Congress MPs. Mr. Prasad insisted that all this was a “matter of record”. He further alleged that the coal blocks were allocated to favourites by bending the rules. “Your Ministers used to write letters… dear Prime Minister, so & so is my brother, please help him,” he claimed.
Earlier in the day, another BJP MP Nishikant Dubey alleged that the Congress and its allies were blind to corruption and nepotism, and were only looking at ways to defend misdeeds during their 10-year tenure in the government.
Mr. Dubey also said that the period between 1947 and 1990 can be dubbed as “licence-permit raj”, while the period between 2004 and 2014 was the “loot raj”. He hailed Mr. Modi’s tenure from 2014 to 2024 as “Ram raj”.
He also alleged that Mr. Singh was never given a free hand to run the government and was at times not aware of decisions being taken by the government.
