Disruptions in parliament frustrating: Jaitley

Acrimony between the BJP and Congress marked the monsoon session of parliament which concluded on Thursday and had significant legislation on its agenda, including the GST bill. “This session has educated public opinion that India’s economic interests are being held to ransom by the political frustration of the Congress“, he said.

While replying to Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge’s charges against her in the Lalit Modi case, Swaraj vehemently criticised the Gandhi family and rejected all charges of wrongdoing in the issue of visa to Lalit Modi.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today accused the Congress of disrupting the entire monsoon session of Parliament without a cause and said that the Gandhis, who headed it, could not bear the thought of anyone from outside the family ruling the country.

“Kharge attacked Swaraj for one hour”.

On the opposition to the passage of Goods and Services Tax (GST), he said Congress had announced it in 2006 and introduced in 2011 but now it was opposing the bill despite all its proposals being accepted.

Accordingly, analysts say that if the government is unable to push through the bill in the current session of Parliament, it will find it extremely hard to meet the deadline of rolling out the tax by 1 April 2016.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tore into Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi in the Parliament on Wednesday.

Even as BJP MPs raised a ruckus, Rahul also repeated his allegations against Swaraj, saying the very fact that she was discreet about her help to Lalit Modi showed she had something to hide. The BJP made strong counter-attacks. She has already spoken once. The Congress Vice President also referred to what he described as the climbdown of the government on the land Bill issue.

He said his relationship with Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and her son Dushyant Singh was a family relationship that went back a long time.

Jaitley said Congress-led government took virtually no steps to nail down Lalit Modi.

“It (Congress) is doing politics against all big works of the government”, Rudy said. The two parties have decided to carry out their battle against each other among the people.

BJP veteran L K Advani, senior ministers, including Rajnath Singh, M Venkaiah Naidu and Ravi Shankar Prasad, walked the 200 metre distance from Parliament House to Vijay Chowk waving placards against the Congress.

A notice of breach of privilege was given against Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi in the Lok Sabha. “The debate in the Lok Sabha yesterday clearly demonstrated the hollowness of Congress’ argument”, Mr Jaitley retorted.

Swaraj also targeted former union minister P Chidambaram, saying he had failed to bring back Lalit Modi from United Kingdom as he did not try for his extradition as suggested by the host government and confined his requests to deportation.

Ironically, just three months after the Lok Sabha clocked its best performance in terms of transacting business in 15 years during the budget session, the monsoon session of Parliament saw the poorest performance of the Rajya Sabha in the same period.