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Rahul Gandhi concocting lies on Rafale, NPAs: Arun Jaitley
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SME Times News Bureau | 21 Sep, 2018
Calling him a "clown prince", Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday
accused Congress President Rahul Gandhi of "concocting lies" on the
Rafale fighter jets deal and the bad loans of banks. The Congress leader
was "polluting" public discourse, Jaitley said.
In a Facebook
post, he said Gandhi first "lied" on the Rafale deal and was now lying
on the non-performing assets (NPAs) claiming that the BJP government had
waived loans of 15 industrialists amounting to Rs 2.5 lakh crore. Not a
single rupee of any debtor had been waived, he said.
"His
(Gandhi's) strategy is simple, concoct a lie and repeat it as many
times" as possible, Jaitley said and wondered whether a person with a
"temperament to concoct facts" deserved to be a part of the public
discourse.
"The world's largest democracy must seriously
introspect whether public discourse should be allowed to be polluted by
the falsehood of a ‘clown prince'," he added.
Referring to Gandhi
winking at his party men after hugging Prime Minister Narendra Modi in
the parliament, the BJP leader said the public discourse was a serious
activity, not a laughter challenge, and that it could not be reduced to a
"hug, a wink or repetition of falsehood".
"In mature
democracies those who rely on falsehood are considered unfit for public
life. Many have been banished from political activity because they were
caught lying. But this rule obviously can't apply to a dynastic
organisation like Congress party," he said.
"If the Rafale
concoctions were the first big lie, the second one stated repeatedly is
that Modi waived of Rs 2.5 lakh crore of 15 industrialists. Every word
of that sentence repeatedly uttered by Rahul Gandhi is false," he added.
Jaitley
said the amount being referred to by Gandhi were lent by the banks
prior to 2014 when the UPA government was in power, which then "kept
rolling over the loans to conceal them (as) loans despite the default".
"The
truth, Mr. Rahul Gandhi, is that your government allowed the banks to
be looted. The loans were inadequately securitized. Your government was
in complicity... By repeating a lie on several occasions, you can't
change that reality," he said.
The Finance Minister said while
the UPA leaders claimed that when they went out of power, the NPAs were
only Rs 2.5 lakh crore. The truth was that NPAs were actually Rs 8.96
lakh crore and were hidden under the carpet as revealed by an asset
quality review conducted by the Reserve Bank of India.
He said
no effective steps were taken by the UPA to recover or reduce the NPAs
and post 2014-15, they increased not because more money was lent but
because interest was mounting on the overdue amounts.
"The only
effective move which has taken place in this regard is the Insolvency
and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). It has changed the debtor-creditor
relationship in India."
He said the Reserve Bank of India had
identified the twelve major defaulters who jointly owed about Rs 3 lakh
crore to various banks.
"The banks under UPA took no steps to
recover these loans. They did not prosecute a single major debtor who
had siphoned off money. It is the NDA government which through IBC,
changed the debtor-creditor relationship and enabled the banks to
effectively pursue the recovery," Jaitley said.
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