Thaindian News

New Delhi, Aug 25 (IANS) Former Team Anna member Arvind Kejriwal accused both Congress and BJP of looting Rs.1.85 lakh crore through the allocation of coal blocks to private players, and called for protest against them Sunday.

Kejriwal Saturday asked the people to protest outside the residences of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Bharatiya Janatya Party president Nitin Gadkari.

“Prime minister, BJP president and Congress president would be gheraoed (lay siege to) tomorrow (Sunday). Let us assemble at Jantar Mantar Aug 26 at 10 a.m,” Kejriwal wrote on micro-blogging site Twitter.

The Congress and the BJP have got together to loot $37 billion in coal scam, he said.

Kejriwal recently threatened to file a public interest suit in court and conduct a referendum to “expose” the government on the allocation of coal blocks if it did not constitute a team to probe the charges.

Both houses of parliament were disrupted for the whole week as the opposition demanded the resignation of the prime minister over the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report on the allocation of coal blocks.

In the wake of the protest, six Delhi Metro stations around the residence of the prime minister will be shut Sunday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Five of the six stations — Patel Chowk, Central Secretariat, Udyog Bhawan, Race Course and Jor Bagh — are on the Gurgaon-Jahangirpuri route. The sixth, Khan Market, falls on the Badarpur corridor.

“We are closing the stations following a Delhi Police order,” said a Metro official.

Reacting to the shutdown of metro stations, Kejriwal’s India Against Corruption (IAC) said that government cannot stop them from protesting and they will go ahead with their protest.

The CAG in a report to parliament last week said that lack of transparency in allocation of coal blocks to private players resulted in a notional loss of Rs.1.85 lakh crore to the exchequer.