Arun Jaitley Dismisses Writers Returning Sahitya Akademi Awards As

No right thinking person can ever rationalise and condone such an action. Mr Sharma insisted that the Prime Minister needed to go beyond expressing regret over the communal incidents in the country.

While terming the killing of Mohammad Akhlaq for allegedly eating beef as “extremely unfortunate and condemnable”, Jaitley questioned the motive of several writers who have returned Sahitya Akademi awards by citing the rise of what they call “atmosphere of intolerance”.

Finance MinisterArun Jaitley today said economic growth could top 7.5 per cent in the current fiscal and macro economic indicators are positive with declining inflation and twin deficits under control.

“Is this protest real or a manufactured one?”

While different reactions are pouring in, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley countered the attacks on the Modi government, by questioning if the protest by writers is a manufactured and politically motivated one in a Facebook post.

Addressing a mid-career training programme of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers, Jaitley said subsidy rationalisation, implementation of direct benefit transfer, bank recapitalisation, investment in infrastructure and irrigation sectors were priority areas of the government. “The manufactured revolt is a case of an ideological intolerance towards the BJP”.

He said the activism of the protesting writers was prompted by the decline of the Congress and the Left and that they have been forced to “manufacture” a controversy themselves.