Kolkata: While the opposition, led by the BJP, is attacking the Congress-led UPA government for scams, including over irregularities in coal block allocations, union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal Wednesday slammed the governments in opposition-ruled states for graft related to land.
"Land is not a central subject. The maximum corruptions in India are in land. Land is the jurisdiction of the state. People do not understand that. People think that I can make laws to deal with corruption in respect to land when I have no jurisdiction to do that," Sibal said at an interactive session organised by Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) here.
"When there is corruption is respect of minerals, in respect of land, they blame the central government... that look you let the corruption to flourish, the fact is that it is the state government. But all this is happening," he said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) disrupted parliament proceedings and demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for alleged discretionary allocations of coal blocks between 2004 to 2009 when he was in charge of the coal ministry.
The CAG report on coal block allotment said private firms are likely to gain Rs 1.86 lakh crore from coal blocks that were allocated to them on nomination basis instead of competitive bidding.
Sibal also slammed the state governments for corruptions at higher education institutions.
"But we do not have the control over the school and colleges of the state governments. On higher education institutions, the government of India only sets standards so maximum corruption is there because the state governments have not changed," he pointed out.
The minister claimed that wherever there was jurisdiction of central government, it had made "enormous changes" to ensure that there was no corruption.
IANS
