Arun Jaitley, the leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, said he had a “conceptual problem” with the government move to amend laws with retrospective effect.
“It can act as a disincentive because nobody plans for future changes in law. We need strong deterrents but not unleash a situation where people believe India is not the best place to invest. We are living in an environment of suspicion and nobody wants a situation where investors make an investment and five years later, someone says the entire business was a scam,” said Jaitley, a senior in the Bharatiya Janata Party. He was speaking at the annual general meeting & national conference of the Confederation of Indian Industry.
Making scathing attacks on the UPA government and its leadership, Jaitley said leadership was also the art of forcing a consensus. “The era of tall governments might be over but I hope it is not an end to the era of tall leaders,” he said.
Accusing the finance minister of bringing back a regime of high taxation and not doing enough to revive the economy, he alleged Pranab Mukherjee was not doing enough because he was caught between two ideological pulls within the UPA and the two power centres were not on the same page.
“We have a situation where one power centre says take steps to get more votes and the other power centre wants greater economic growth. The finance minister is caught between these two ideological pulls, so he has decided not to do enough,” added Jaitley.
He said the country’s road map to economic growth was known to all but the real problem was of political instability. “Economic consensus can be made only if there is political stability. If the government tries to poach a minister of the Trinamool Congress, then it will create problems. The government deals with the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party through the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The chief ministers are ganging up against the government and opposition parties are talking about misuse of CBI,” Jaitley said.