Jaitley blames Cong, accuses former CM Rawat of horse-trading

On a day when the Congress moved court against the imposition of President’s Rule in Uttarakhand, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley sought to turn the tables on the opposition party by accusing it of having plunged the state into a “serious Constitutional crisis” and continuing a government that should have quit after the failure to pass the Appropriation Bill.

Jaitley lashed out at the Congress for compounding the crisis and accused chief minister Harish Rawat of “allurement, horse-trading and disqualification with a view to altering the composition of the House”.

The Congress has questioned the validity of President’s Rule as it came a day before a scheduled floor test, which it asserts would have offered Rawat a chance to prove his majority. But Jaitley, in a Facebook post ’A State Without a Budget’, accused the state Congress government of “murdering democracy every day from the 18th of March till the 27th of March”.

Defending the imposition of President’s Rule, he said: “The Congress party in the state of Uttarakhand split after a section of the leadership alleged that they were dissatisfied both with the chief minister and the central leadership of the Congress party… Nine members of the Congress party in the Legislative Assembly decided to vote against the Appropriation Bill, which provides for the budget of the state.”

He said with 35 members (including nine from the Congress) having voted against the Appropriation Bill and 32 in favour, a request for division of votes was not met and it was claimed that the bill had been passed without a vote.

“There are strong facts to suggest that the Appropriation Bill was actually defeated. As a consequence, the government had to resign. Two further consequences flow out of this. Firstly, the Appropriation Bill sanctioning expenditure from 1st April 2016 was not approved and, secondly, if the Appropriation Bill was defeated, the continuation of the government subsequent to 18th March 2016 is unconstitutional,” Jaitley said.

The Congress party in the state of Uttarakhand split after a section of the leadership alleged that they were dissatisfied both with the chief minister and the central leadership of the Congress party... ARUN JAITLEY, Union finance minister