PM, Sonia deliberate on coal block row

With Opposition adamant on thecancellation of coal blocks, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi today deliberated with the party top brass the strategy in the midst of logjam in Parliament.

With Opposition adamant on thecancellation of coal blocks, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi today deliberated with the party top brass the strategy in the midst of logjam in Parliament.

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Coal minister Sriprakash Jaiswal was also called for the Congress Core Committee meeting and so were law minister Salman Khurshid and telecom minister Kapil Sibal.

Home minister Sushilkumar Shinde, who is also the leader of Lok Sabha, was present during the deliberations.

The meeting took place hours after Gandhi held a meeting with senior leaders, including Ahmed Patel, Pawan Kumar Bansal and Shinde to discuss ways to break the logjam in Parliament which has paralysed the proceedings for the eighth day.

Next week is the last week of monsoon session of Parliament which is concluding on September 8.

Government has already rejected the demand for cancellation of coal blocks and has trashed the BJP demand for resignation of the Prime Minister in the wake of CAG findings of the coal blocs allocation.

The government and Congress have also been critical of the CAG reports on the coal block allocation issue and the Prime Minister has said the conclusions drawn by it were disputable.

The meeting took place on a day when Congress leader Digvijay Singh targeted CAG Vinod Rai suggesting he has a political agenda like one of his controversial predecessor T N Chaturvedi who had given a report on Bofors issue and soon after joined BJP.