New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi came out in support of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, saying he will come out of the DDCA corruption charges with “flying colours”.
“Jaitley will come out with flying colours in the same manner as (BJP leader) L.K. Advani did in the hawala case,” Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu quoted Modi as telling a BJP parliamentary party meeting.
“The Congress tried to implicate Advani in the hawala case but it boomeranged on it,” Modi added.
The prime minister said the Congress was not able to digest its electoral defeats since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and was raking up manufactured allegations to defame his government.
He said the Congress did the same with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Chief Ministers Vasundhara Raje of Rajasthan as well as Shivraj Chouhan of Madhya Pradesh.
The prime minister’s comments came a day after Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah described Jaitley as a man of honesty, after the finance minister filed a defamation suit against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and other Aam Aadmi Party leaders.
Modi said BJP MPs have been asked to go to the people after the end of parliament’s winter session on December 23 and highlight all the work done by the central government.
“The prime minister asked party MPs to spend a night in each assembly segment in their constituencies in January and visit neighbouring constituencies in February to expose the disinformation carried out by the Congress,” Naidu said.
“Rajya Sabha MPs were asked to visit such constituencies where there are no BJP MPs,” he added.
BJP MP Kirti Azad, who was the first to level the corruption charges against Jaitley regarding the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA), did not attend the parliamentary party meeting.
Azad told reporters he had “prior engagement” and clarified that he had not boycotted the meeting.
Jaitley has denied the corruption charges levelled against him by Azad as well as the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party. Jaitley headed the DDCA for 13 years till 2013.
Sushma Swaraj and Raje were targetted by the opposition over their alleged links with former IPL chairman Lalit Modi. Chauhan was blamed for what came to be known as the Vyapam scam.