Indian PM takes to Twitter in 'Coal-gate' defense
Source: Agencies |
August 28, 2012, Tuesday
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AFTER being shouted down by opposition politicians in Parliament, India's prime minister took to Twitter yesterday to defend himself against a coal scandal roiling the country, saying accusations his government lost the country huge amounts of money were baseless.
India's Parliament has been all but paralyzed since the national auditor released a report two weeks ago saying the sale of coal blocks without competitive bidding was expected to net private companies windfall profits of up to US$34 billion. The main opposition has demanded Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's resignation.
Singh stood up in Parliament to make a statement defending his government, but was drowned out by members of the Bharatiya Janata Party, who were screaming, "The prime minister must resign."
His office instead posted his defense on his official handle on the microblogging site, Twitter. "I wish to say that any allegations of impropriety are without basis and unsupported by the facts," Singh's office tweeted. A string of tweets went on to accuse the auditors of using faulty logic and disputable math to produce their report.
He also said that as the minister in charge at the time in question he would take full responsibility for the decision not to switch the government's method of allocating coal fields to an auction system sooner.
At one point he tweeted, in Hindi, an Indian saying: "My silence is better than a thousand answers."
Singh's government has come under fire in recent years for a string of corruption scandals that has tarnished his image as an upstanding technocrat. While few have accused him of personal corruption, his government has been repeatedly battered by criticism of its handling of everything from the 2010 Commonwealth Games to the sale of 3G cellphone spectrum in an irregular process the auditor said cost the country tens of billions of dollars.
India's Parliament has been all but paralyzed since the national auditor released a report two weeks ago saying the sale of coal blocks without competitive bidding was expected to net private companies windfall profits of up to US$34 billion. The main opposition has demanded Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's resignation.
Singh stood up in Parliament to make a statement defending his government, but was drowned out by members of the Bharatiya Janata Party, who were screaming, "The prime minister must resign."
His office instead posted his defense on his official handle on the microblogging site, Twitter. "I wish to say that any allegations of impropriety are without basis and unsupported by the facts," Singh's office tweeted. A string of tweets went on to accuse the auditors of using faulty logic and disputable math to produce their report.
He also said that as the minister in charge at the time in question he would take full responsibility for the decision not to switch the government's method of allocating coal fields to an auction system sooner.
At one point he tweeted, in Hindi, an Indian saying: "My silence is better than a thousand answers."
Singh's government has come under fire in recent years for a string of corruption scandals that has tarnished his image as an upstanding technocrat. While few have accused him of personal corruption, his government has been repeatedly battered by criticism of its handling of everything from the 2010 Commonwealth Games to the sale of 3G cellphone spectrum in an irregular process the auditor said cost the country tens of billions of dollars.
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