The Congress and the BJP were engaged in a bitter war of words on Monday with the former accusing Prime Minsiter Narendra Modi of inducting “tainted” Minister in his Cabinet and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley strongly rebutting the Congress charge, calling them “baseless” and stressing that the PM had chosen his team after “checking the credentials and the facts related to each one of them”.
Claiming that unlike the UPA, the NDA Prime Minister has the “last word” in selecting his Ministers and expanding his Cabinet, Jaitley point-wise rebutted the Congress allegations against three of the newly-inducted Ministers.
Referring to the Congress’ allegation against Union Minsiter Ram Shankar Katheria, Jaitley said he is a senior leader from Uttar Pradesh and claimed that “every BJP worker in the State has a criminal case filed by the Akhilesh Yadav Government”.
He also rejected the Congress allegations against the TDP face in the Government, YS Chowdary, and BJP’s newly-inducted Minister, Giriraj Singh, from Bihar. “The examples given by them are completely baseless... These are cases arising out of political agitations. Not cases out of some crime or moral turpitude,” Jaitley said.
“They said TDP representative Chowdary has Non-Performing Assets of his company. One of his many companies — he is a well-known industrialist — was making losses. One account was in difficulty. The bank restructured it; he is paying back all the installments (and) has a regular account today,” said Jaitley.
On July 9, four people were arrested in connection with a burglary in Giriraj Singh’s house in Patna and Rs1.14 crore cash, $600, gold and silver jewellery and six luxury watches purportedly stolen from there recovered. Singh had first complained about theft of Rs50,000. Aftyer recovery of such huge amount, he claimed that it belonged to a relative.
Defending his ministerial colleague, Jaitley said if Singh was involved in any wrongdoing, the Bihar Government could have probed it.
Following the Cabinet expansion, AICC general secretary Ajay Maken had sought the resignation of Chowdary citing bank documents that claimed that his company had defaulted on the repayment of loans worth Rs317.6 crore taken from the Central Bank of India.
Maken had also alleged that Katheria has mentioned 23 cases against him in the affidavit he has filed with the Election Commission. “Perhaps, no other MP has such bulky criminal record,” he said.
Claiming that two to three controversial new Ministers were inducted in the expansion on Sunday, Maken said the number of “tainted” Ministers has gone upto 15 to 16 out of the 66.