Hitting out at the Congress in the context of the AgustaWestland bribery revelations, Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman blamed the principal opposition party for the continuous disruptions in Parliament.

In an interview with BusinessLine , Sitharaman said the Congress has to answer for the AgustaWestland scam in which an Italian court has mentioned its President, Sonia Gandhi.

“…you are telling me that the outside view is that the government hasn’t done much to pursue the case in India in the last two years. It’s the Italian court which has pronounced its verdict. Based on the verdict you find some names. Some names are part of the judgement and there’s a list of witnesses and related persons. If they have named the Congress President in one of these documents, that’s not for us to answer,” Sitharaman said.

She said former Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s criticism of her remarks on RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan were his way of diverting attention from his role in the Ishrat Jahan case –– in which, she implied, Chidambaram was guilty of “misleading” the court and committing “perjury”.

“In the context in which he (Chidambaram) raised that issue, I only see that he has used it as an excuse to evade answers that only he can give. Convenient for himself, he has chosen to speak on the RBI Governor’s remarks, as if the Governor needs a former Finance Minister to speak up for him. I don’t think it was necessary,” she said.

“After having filed such an affidavit, you see a political opportunity to somehow hit at the then Chief Minister and then Home Minister and you start tweaking what you said in the affidavit which is, if anything, misleading the court, which I think goes by the name of perjury,” she added.

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