New Delhi: With general elections fast approaching, the opposition on Tuesday mounted pressure on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to quit over his government’s alleged attempts to scuttle a fair probe into the scam relating to allocation of coal blocks.

Both Houses of parliament were reputedly disrupted before being adjourned for the day as the opposition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) demanded Singh’s resignation and the sacking of law minister Ashwani Kumar.

Sonia Gandhi, chief of the ruling Congress party, turned down the opposition demand following a meeting of the party’s core group, asserting that Singh would not quit. “Let them ask,” Sonia said when asked about the opposition’s concerted campaign. The stage is now set for further confrontation in parliament during the second half of the budget session, which began on Monday after a month-long recess.

Law minister Ashwani Kumar is accused of vetting the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) report on the coal block allocation scam, generally referred to as the coalgate scam in the local media.

“It is not acceptable that the government suppresses the truth. We demand that the prime minister resigns and the law minister should be sacked,” senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

The core group meeting was convened immediately after both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were adjourned for half an hour in the morning. It discussed the strategy to tackle the opposition which has plans of cornering the government over the coalgate and 2G spectrum allocation scams with an eye on the next general elections.

Parliamentary panel report

In between slogan-shouting and disruptions, the report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on coal blocks allocation was tabled in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. The report says that no bidding process was held for allocations and has recommended cancellation of allotments where production has not yet started.

All eyes would now be on the CBI affidavit, which the agency must file before the Supreme Court on Friday. The CBI, according to reports, may tell the apex court that the Law Ministry did ask for the report and vetted it, a charge that the Congress party has been rejecting.

The CBI in its bid to escape the Supreme Court wrath may submit both the original and vetted copies of the report.

Political uproar followed news published by a national daily earlier this month that law minister had vetted the CBI report and sent the toned down version of the report to the prime minister’s office for approval.

The Supreme Court had instructed CBI in March not to share the report with the government after the probe agency said in its status report that many companies were allocated coal blocks through false representations.

Ashwani Kumar is accused of asking the CBI chief to meet him in his office and show him the report in which he made several alterations.

“There is reason to believe [that] PMO officials were involved in the proposed changes to the coal report… Let all emails exchanged between the PMO officials and the Law Ministry on the coal report be made public at once,” said senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley, who is leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha.

Jaitley was not impressed with suggestions that CBI did not accept many changes suggested by the law minister, saying it makes no difference whether the government’s attempt at interference was successful. According to him, the CBI’s investigation is meant to be independent and its report meant to be confidential between the court and the agency.

CBI director Ranjit Kumar was asked by the Supreme Court to file an affidavit by April 26 that the report had not been seen by the political executive.

Prime Minister Singh was in-charge of the Coal Ministry over several years when coal blocks were allocated to various public and private companies, causing immense loss of revenue to the national exchequer.