Just a day after prime minister Manmohan Singh celebrated two years of the UPA II rule, the Bharatiya Janata Party has accused him of direct culpability in the "loot" in a Rs 85,000 crore coal 'scam', as he held the portfolio between 2006 and 2009 after Shibu Soren had resigned.

The modus operandi of this latest scam is no different from that of the 2G scam as "rules were bent, definitions changed, modalities distorted to benefit the allottees, and many sold the coal blocks to other companies at hefty premium," Vidarbha MP Hansraj Ahir and party spokesman Prakash Javadekar said at a press conference here.

They alleged that illegal gratification was obtained in this case by bringing a bill in parliament in 2006 and then keeping it hanging for five years to allow the massive loot. They demanded an immediate
 probe monitored by the Supreme Court and a special audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).

The scam started with the introduction of the Mines and Minerals Amendment Bill in parliament in 2006 for the auction of mines that triggered a rush and the government went on surreptitiously gifting coal blocks free of cost to 143 private companies without waiting for passage of the bill. The bill was passed only in 2010 while the loot went on unchecked.

Ahir and Javadekar said Manmohan Singh had an excuse for the 2G scam that it was the handiwork of former telecom minister A Raja and he didn't know about it, but he cannot have any such alibi as he headed the coal ministry and sat over the coal blocks which were being frittered away for three years to 51 companies in 2006, 19 in 2007, 41 in 2008 and 32 in 2009.

Which are these companies that minted the money? The existing policy allowed allotment of the coal blocks to the actual user industries, namely steel, cement and power plants, while those gifted the blocks had neither any industry nor even any licence to start such an industry to get the blocks. They were all dummy companies.

"The culpability of the prime minister is clearly established as he had presided over this loot of precious natural resources, allowing
 fake and bogus companies that either sold the licences or made money by selling coal that they were supposed to utilise in own industries,"
Ahir said.

He said the going rate as per the business circles is Rs 50 per tonne and thus more than Rs 85,000 crores changed hands during the four-year coal scam.