The drama continued in both the Houses of Parliament as the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha were adjourned after the session commenced as BJP members continued with their demand for Manmohan Singh's resignation and demanded the cancellation of coal block allegations, reports said.

Finally defending his stand on the coal block issue Singh said, "Any allegations of impropriety in coal allocation are without basis."

He said the allegations in CAG were unsupported by facts and the observations were clearly disputable.

The CAG reports have estimated “undue benefits” of over Rs.3.06 lakh crore to private parties in coal block allocation without bidding, Delhi Airport development and diversion of coal to a power project.

He added that as the minister in charge at the time in question he would take full responsibility for the decision not to switch the government's method of allocating coal fields to an auction system sooner, reports said. He also said that he followed the policies introduced and implemented by previous non-Congress governments, reports added.

The PM, who is under attack over the allocation during 2005-2009 when he held the coal portfolio, has been waiting to make a statement since last week but could not do so because of disruption caused by Opposition, mainly the BJP.

Senior BJP leaders Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj said that the Congress party had benefitted financially from the companies that were assigned coal fields, and that the allocations made to 142 companies must be cancelled immediately. 

To counter the BJP's unrelenting demands for his resignation, the Prime Minister is expected to seek a trust vote soon to prove he has not lost the confidence of Parliament. 

The concern in this entire episode is that several crucial bills are being held up during the session which is set to end on Sep 8. About 31 bills were listed for consideration in the monsoon session.

Key among these were the ones on land acquisition and protection of whistleblowers exposing corruption, apart from discussions on the drought situation and FDI in retail.