How much does Rahul know, wonders Jaitley

After Rahul Gandhi’s address to farmers in Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday, BJP leader Finance Minister Arun Jaitley questioned the ‘wisdom’ of the Congress President, taking to Facebook to pen his observations. Tweeting later in the day, he asked Rahul Gandhi to “check facts before stating the reverse which will only aggravate his party’s fallibility”.

“Every time I listen to the views of 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,” read Jaitley’s Facebook post, titled How Much Does He Know? .

Jaitley refuted Rahul’s allegation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had waived loans of ₹2.5-lakh crore of the country’s 15 top industrialists. In fact, the government had not waived a single rupee, he claimed.

“Those who owed money to the banks and other creditors have been declared insolvent and removed from their companies by the IBC (Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code) enacted by Prime Minister Modi’s government. These loans were given largely during the UPA government,” Jaitley wrote.

To another of Rahul’s allegations, that the government had not made available loans to farmers, but only to the industrialists, Jaitley said it was another false charge. The Finance Minister said it was during the period of the UPA government, “particularly UPA II”, that most loans, which have now turned NPAs, were disbursed. “From 2014, we have been systematically taking one step after the other to recover these monies back.”

On Rahul’s charge that the PM “gave ₹35,000 crore” to “two diamond jewellers who have now escaped the country”, Jaitley said this, too, is “factually false”. “This banking fraud started in the year 2011 when the UPA II was in power. It was only detected during the NDA period.”

Rahul’s claim that mobile phones now manufactured in China would be made in India if the Congress comes to power, was a case of inadequate knowledge, Jaitley said.

“In 2014, when UPA went out of power, there were only two mobile phone manufacturing units in India. In 2018, with the result of our electronics policy and the incentives in a four-year period, this has increased to 120 units with an investment of ₹1,32,000 crore,” he said.

Rahul had also said jobs were not being created in India. To this the Finance Minister said that the latest GDP data has re-emphasised India’s status as the world’s fastest growing economy. There is a double-digit growth in construction, expansion in manufacturing, an increased capital formation which indicates increased investment, large investment in physical infrastructure and increased investment in rural India. “All these are job creating sectors,” he said.

To Kick start election campaign in Madhya Pradesh, Rahul choose Mandsaur which was centre of last year's farmers' agitation and had witnessed violence on June 6, when six people were killed in police firing. Here he assured to connect farms and villages to the cities, Jaitley found this as his impression of the Digvijay Singh era in Madhya Pradesh.

The Finance Minister blamed that Madhya Pradesh had the worst set of roads in India when the Congress was voted out in 2003. Poor quality roads was one key reason for ousting the Congress. “Thanks to Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Prime Minister Modi who during the NDA Government, has tripled the investment in rural roads, in comparison to what the UPA spent, there is a revolution in the Gram Sadak Yojana,“ he claimed.

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