Jaitley trashes allegations on inducting ‘tainted’ ministers

NEW DELHI: As the government came under the Congress-led Opposition fire for inducting allegedly “tainted” ministers, finance minister Arun Jaitley mounted a strong counter-attack refuting all allegations and insisting that “the entire charge of Congress is baseless”.

Congress communication department chairman Ajay Maken had cited records of 23 ministers and, in particular, targeted TDP nominee YS Chowdary and BJP’S Ram Shankar Katheria. Both leaders were inducted as ministers of state on Sunday.

Upping the ante against Congress, Jaitley said, “During the UPA government, the PM never had the last word in the cabinet formation or its expansion. In the NDA, the last word is exclusively that of the PM.” Jaitley advised the Congress to “confine itself to quality of poor governance that they gave and compare it with the quality of governance the NDA government is giving rather than resorting to these baseless allegations”.

Maken had sought Chowdary’s resignation as his company had allegedly defaulted on the repayment of loans worth ₹317.6 crore taken from the Central Bank of India. Katheria, the Congress said, has 23 criminal cases against him. The Congress also described inclusion of Giriraj Singh, MP from Nawada, as a “crisp slap to secularism.”

The appointment of JP Nadda as Union health minister was tar geted by Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party, who tweeted “Nadda, the man who got Sanjeev Chaturvedi transferred from AIIMS, made health min? So, now modi ji will remove corruption in AIIMS thro Nadda?”