Jaitley calls Rahul a ‘clown prince’, accuses him of concocting facts

In his sharpest political attack so far, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday characterised Congress president Rahul Gandhi as “clown prince” who is also a purveyor of falsehood.

In a detailed blog titled “Falsehood of a Clown Prince”, Jaitley catalogued the charges — Rafale deal scam, rising NPAs and banking defaulters — that construct the principal Opposition party’s narrative — “suit-boot ki sarkaar, that believes in privatising profits and nationalising losses” — against the BJP..

Jaitley’s counter-offensive shaped the BJP’s rebuttal that entailed caricaturing the Congress president and dismissing the issues he has raised as either “lies” or “legacy issues” carried over from the Congress.

The Finance Minister dismissed Rahul Gandhi as unfit for public life and discourse.

Refuting allegations

“You lied on the Rafale deal, you lied on the NPAs. Your temperament to concoct facts raises a legitimate question — do people whose natural preference is falsehood deserve to be a part of the public discourse. Public discourse is a serious activity. It is not a laughter challenge. It cannot be reduced to a hug, a wink or repetition of falsehood. The world’s largest democracy must seriously introspect whether public discourse should be allowed to be polluted by falsehood of a ‘clown prince’,” said Jaitley.

“Many have been banished from political activity because they were caught lying. But this rule obviously can’t apply to a dynastic organisation such as the Congress party,” said Jaitley.

‘Not our burden’

The Finance Minister sharpened the party line on the NPAs — that bad loans were given when the Congress was in power — and the BJP is only trying to cleanse the banking system. To Rahul Gandhi’s repeated allegation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has waived off ₹2.5 lakh crore of 15 chosen industrialists, Jaitley said “every word of that sentence is false”.

“Firstly, these amounts were lent prior to 2014. Secondly, the UPA government, in order to conceal these loans despite the default, kept rolling over the loans. These loans were ever-greened. Today, the UPA leaders state that when they went out of Government, the NPAs were only ₹2.5 lakh crore. The truth is that NPAs were hidden under the carpet. In 2015, an asset quality review conducted by the Reserve Bank of India found that the NPAs were ₹8.96 lakh crore and the real amount was being hidden. Thirdly, no effective steps were taken which could result in recovery or reduction of the NPAs,” said Jaitley.

He said post 2014-15, NPAs have increased not because more monies were lent but because interest was mounting up on the overdue amounts.

“Some of the defaulters were given a second restructuring to continue hiding defaults. An account is a ‘performing account’ as long as the debt is being serviced by principal or interest is being paid. The moment a debtor is unable to service the debt, a default occurs and on expiry of 90 days an account is declared a NPA. During the UPA, most of these accounts were not declared NPAs,” said Jaitley.

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