With former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh summoned as accused by a special court in a coal scam case, Congress today said that receiving court summons does not make one guilty.

"Sorry to puncture the brouhaha, but receiving a court summons does not make one guilty. That is elementary law. Right?" party spokesman Sanjay Jha said in a series of tweets.

Jha insisted that it was former PM Singh who pushed for auctions in coal block allocations.

"He sought transparency, resisted by BJP-ruled states. The truth is coal block dubious allocations were all in non-Congress ruled states; MP, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, WB etc," he said.

Singh, industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla, ex-coal secretary P C Parakh and three others were today summoned as accused by a special court in a coal scam case pertaining to allocation of Talabira-II coal block in Odisha in 2005 and asked to appear before it on April 8.