FM Arun Jaitley punch back at Rahul Gandhi, asks 'how much does he know?'

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Finance Minister Arun Jaitley hits back at Congress president Rahul Gandhi with negation to what the latter had said at a public address in Mandsaur
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley hits back at Congress president Rahul Gandhi with negation to what the latter had said at a public address in Mandsaur

New Delhi : Finance Minister Arun Jaitley hits back at Congress president Rahul Gandhi with negation to what the latter had said at a public address in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, on Wednesday.

In an article, Jaitley said: “Every time I listen to the view of Shri Rahul Gandhi, both inside and outside Parliament, I ask myself the same question – How much does he know? When will he know?”

“Listening to his speech delivered in Madhya Pradesh today reaffirms my curiosity about the answer. Is he being inadequately briefed or is he being a little too liberal with his facts,” Jaitley said, before providing a six-point rebuttal to what Gandhi said at a rally in Mandsaur on Wednesday.

Rahul Gandhi was addressing a rally at Pipliya Mandi in Mandsaur district to observe the first anniversary of police firing on farmers during a protest in which six farmers were killed.

Jaitley said that Gandhi’s accusation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government had waved loans of Rs 2.5 lakh crore of top 15 industrialists of the country as ‘factually false’.

The finance minister explained that the Centre had not waived “a single rupee due from any industrialist”.

Instead, those who are yet still to pay money to the banks and other creditors “have been declared insolvent and removed from their companies” by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), Jaitley claimed.

Replying to Gandhi’s charge that loans are not made available to farmers and are only available to the industrialists, the finance minister said, “This was during the UPA Government, particularly UPA II, when bulk of amount constitute the NPA’s today were given by the banking system during the period 2008-14. From 2014 we have been systematically taking one step after the other to recover these monies back.”

Talking about the Congress president’s charge that Prime Minister Modi ‘gave Rs 35,000 crore each to two diamond jewelers, who escaped the country,’ Jaitley has replied that the “banking fraud started in the year 2011 when the UPA II was in power. It was only detected during the NDA period.”