After Home Minister Rajnath Singh and BJP president Amit Shah, it was the turn of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to come out in support of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in the Lalit Modi controversy.
At a press conference here on Tuesday, Jaitley fully endorsed Swaraj’s position while maintaining that the Enforcement Directorate has issued show cause notices to Lalit Modi in 15 cases, the investigations of which are over. Swaraj has been facing criticism for helping former IPL head Lalit Modi in procuring travel documents from the UK.
With Jaitley also joining the senior team of BJP politicians defending her, the signal being sent by the government was one of putting a united front on such issues.
Ahead of the press meet, Jaitley held a meeting with Swaraj and Rajnath on the special package to flood-hit Jammu and Kashmir.
When asked why Jaitley had been silent on the issue till now — when the government was under attack from all sides and BJP MPs like Kirti Azad had hinted that internal issues could be a problem behind the “campaign” against Swaraj — he said all ministers in the Narendra Modi Cabinet are capable of taking decisions. Once a decision is taken it will be a collective responsibility of the government, he added.
“All allegations levelled are baseless. Her (Swaraj) statement and that of the party president — that whatever she did was with good intentions — are true,” he told reporters at a joint press conference with Rajnath.
Shades of blue Jaitley added that Swaraj acted bona fide. “The entire government and the party are one on the issue. There should be no doubt on this,” he said.
When asked about the blue-corner notice against Lalit Modi by the ED, he said: “There is confusion about shades of blue.”
“There is a procedure of a blue-corner notice which is issued by the Interpol. There is a procedure of a light blue corner notice which is issued by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence at the request of ED. That notice was issued in 2010 and that notice continues to be valid even today,” he added.
Cases aplenty The Opposition, which has been demanding that the Prime Minister state his stand on the issue, continued with its tirade against the Centre today.
The Congress maintained that Lalit Modi is accused in a number of cases. “This government has said in Parliament that the cases against this person, BCCI and other criminals involved in match-fixing and money-laundering are to the tune of ₹2,148.34 crore for contravention of provisions of FEMA Act.
“So this (favour) was done to somebody who is sought to be prosecuted both under FEMA and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act,” said the Congress’s deputy leader in Rajya Sabha, Anand Sharma.