Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and Parliamentary AffairsMinister Pawan Kumar Bansal talked to Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha SushmaSwaraj in the House soon after it was adjourned.
They requested her to allow the House to function and assuredher that the government is ready to debate the coal allocation issue.
Swaraj stuck to her party demand that the PM should resign.She was accompanied by Deputy Leader of BJP in Lok Sabha Gopinath Munde andspokesperson and MP Shahnawaz Hussain. BJP did not budge from its statedposition, sources said.
Later, BJP leaders L K Advani, Swaraj, Leader of Oppositionin Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, Hussain and Munde held a meeting. The party willcontinue to force adjournments till the government agrees to its demand,sources said.
Asked about his meeting with Swaraj, Shinde said, "I amtalking to everybody… to (Leader ofOpposition) Sushma Swaraj and other allies too. An effort is on to have adiscussion and through it we can resolve this deadlock. We and the PrimeMinister are saying this repeatedly that through a discussion we can resolvethis issue".
He also said that the government is not worried about theOpposition's attempts to woo UPA allies to their side on the coal allocationissue.
"I am not worried about anything. My allies areabsolutely strong bcause they believe in secularism," Shinde toldreporters outside Parliament House when asked if he feared UPA allies walkingover to the Opposition camp.
SP and BSP, which lend outside support to the government,kept away from a meeting of political parties convened by Lok Sabha SpeakerMeira Kumar to end the Parliament impasse.
NDA convenor Sharad Yadav has reached out to some of the UPAallies on the issue.
Taking a dig at the enormous loss calculated by the CAG, hesaid, "I think, thanks to rising prosperity in the country over the lastfew years, we are all enamoured about the numbers which run into six digits andnine digits."
He also attacked the Opposition saying the Government wasbeing pilloried for attempting to put in place a new transparent way ofallocating coal blocks by amending the law.
"A government which brought about, although after sometime, a successful change in policy is being blamed for continuation of apolicy that had its origin many years before the UPA came into being. So, ifyou did nothing, you are not to be blamed. If you try to bring about a change,you are to be blamed. Is that the standard by which we will conduct our publicaffairs," he said.
Explaining the delay in changing the policy, he saidgovernments after government in states had opposed auction of coal blocks. TheCentre could have changed the procedure by an executive order but decided notto because that would have amounted to riding roughshod over the States.
Asked about Law Ministry's recommendation in 2006 that coalblocks can be auction through an administrative order, Chidambaram said thegovernment avoided it because it could have been challenged in court.
The Government, he said, wanted to proceed ahead by changingthe law which it did subsequently after both the Houses passed an amending law.
