 "Swaraj, Jaitley target Gandhis")
The attack on Rahul, replete with personal slights not only on him but the entire Gandhi family, including Rajiv Gandhi, not only left Congress President Sonia Gandhi and son Rahul furious but is likely to widen the chasm between the Narendra Modi government and the Congress leadership that will make any rapprochement between the two much more difficult.
The turn of events in the morning had enlivened hope of a thaw between the government and the Congress when Speaker Sumitra Mahajan accepted, at the behest of Swaraj, an adjournment motion moved by the Congress to discuss her alleged involvement in the Lalit Modi controversy and their demand that she quit.
More From This Section
The Congress, by moving the motion, had relented on its “no resignation, no House” stand, while the government came around to discussing the issue under an adjournment motion. The Speaker had until the previous day resisted adjourning other business to take up what the Congress insisted on calling “Modigate”. The motion was defeated by a voice vote after the Congress staged a walkout. The Congress and Left parties were isolated, with no other non-National Democratic Alliance party supporting them.
The discussion, that lasted nearly four hours, had Congress leader in the House Mallikarjun Kharge start a virulent attack on the external affairs minister and how her husband and daughter benefited from Lalit Modi. But it was Swaraj’s stinging diatribe against the Gandhi family, in the midst of incessant slogan shouting by Congress MPs, which left the Congress benches nonplussed and moved senior BJP leader L K Advani to pat his protégé on the back when she concluded her impassioned speech.
“I want to tell Rahul Gandhi – you love holidays. On your next one, read up on your family history and come back and ask ‘Mamma (Sonia Gandhi), how much money did we get in the (Ottavio) Quattrocchi case? Why did daddy (Rajiv Gandhi) allow release of the killer of 15,000 people (a reference to 1984 Bhopal Gas tragedy accused former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson)?’” Swaraj asked. She said Anderson was allowed to leave India as a quid pro quo for the release of the son of Rajiv Gandhi’s family friend Adil Shahryar.
Swaraj said husband Swaraj Kaushal and daughter didn’t take even a rupee in the Lalit Modi passport case. There was a conflict of interest in former finance minister P Chidambaram’s case. He was the finance minister when wife Nalini Chidambaram was the lawyer in the Saradha chit fund scam case, whose file was with his ministry, Swaraj alleged. The minister said Chidambaram failed to bring back Lalit Modi from the UK by confining his requests for the deportation of the businessman when the UK authorities said they could extradite him. “For four years, you (Congress government) did nothing. You remained inactive. There was no effort for extradition. You are asking me how he (Lalit Modi) got right of residency (in UK). He got it during your time. Whatever happened, it was during your tenure,” she said.
Joining the debate after Swaraj’s defence, Rahul asked how much money her family received from Lalit Modi. “How much money has she received to save the symbol of black money (Lalit Modi) and why did she help him on the sly?” he asked. The Congress vice-president said the PM, who was absent from the House, didn’t have the guts to face Parliament and the problem with the government was that it does not want to see, hear or speak the truth, “like Mahatma Gandhi’s three monkeys”. He said Swaraj had met him on Tuesday and asked him, holding his hand, as to why he was angry with her and he told her he was speaking the truth. “Sushma ji, you had lowered your gaze when I said I am speaking the truth while looking straight into your eyes,” Rahul said .
Jaitley said Swaraj has been made a “scapegoat of a pretext” to stall reform legislations. He questioned the steps taken by the UPA-2 government to bring back Lalit Modi. The finance minister mocked Rahul’s brief speech: “The difficulty with Rahul Gandhi is that he is an expert without knowledge.” On the allegations that daughter of Swaraj had represented Lalit Modi in a court, he said, she was one in a “crowd” of lawyers representing Lalit Modi. He used this to hit out at the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. “There are still many honest people whose children have to work for a living. For generations, generations of the family who have dominated this country’s politics have not worked for a living. They have learnt the art of living comfortably without working. Some of us are not.” Criticising the Congress for ensuring a washout of the session, Jaitley said to Rahul: “You are very fond of saying that there were three monkeys but don’t make a monkey out of this country. Without an issue you hold up Parliament, you waste a whole session…”
On Wednesday, a fence was erected around the chair of the secretary general of the Lok Sabha, who sits right below the Speaker’s chair, to prevent Opposition MPs from coming near him.