Coal was not sold, so nobody benefited: Sibal

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Government on Wednesday said there was no question of anyone benefiting from coal block allocation as the mineral were never sold and accused the BJP of raking up the issue for no reason because of its desperation to come to power at the Centre before 2014.

Telecom and HRD Minister Kapil Sibal also rejected Opposition demand for cancellation of the licences for coal block allocation, saying such a step would cause huge monetary loss and badly affect the country's power sector.

"Under the nationalisation policy, coal cannot be sold... Coal from the blocks allotted was never sold. So, who could have benefitted," he asked while addressing a press conference at the Congress headquarters.

"Why is there so much of noise? Did anyone sell the coal," he asked.
He accused the BJP of not bothering about the country's interest and said it was thinking only how to come to power before 2014, when the Lok Sabha elections are due.

Slamming BJP for its tacticts of disrupting Parliament, Sibal alleged that the 'ideology' used to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi is being used now to 'kill' Indian democracy.

"The BJP does not think about the nation. It wants to come to power before 2014. It just believes in the ideology of disruption and killing of democracy," the HRD Minister said.

On demands that the controversial coal block allocations should be cancelled, he said, "We cannot cancel the licences. It will be lead to wastage of crores of rupees. Many banks are involved and the decision will affect the power sector badly."