Robert Vadra deplores ‘attention seeking’ Swamy’s derogatory remark on waiters

In his Facebook post, the son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi responded to Swamy’s comments that ministers while overseas wearing coat and tie looked like waiters, in an apparent jibe at finance minister Arun Jaitley who was wearing a suit during his Beijing visit.

He also did not spare Robert Vadra, husband of Priyanka Gandhi, who had called him earlier as an “attention seeker, ‘ “deplorable” and also as a ‘classist” over his comment that ministers who wear a coat and tie look like waiters.

Top BJP leaders are reportedly not happy with Mr Swamy’s statements and sources assert that the party’s ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not using him to target leaders.

But Swamy denied reports of BJP leadership being angry with him for his recent outbursts against the Prime Minister’s Chief Economic Advisor, Arvind Subramanian and Jaitley. Perhaps that is why he felt bad when I spoke about waiters.

According to reports, Senior BJP leaders said that Swamy had overstepped the “limits of decency” while “weakening the foundations of the government” with his public attacks, including the alleged one on Jaitley. “In fact, Jaitley looks very smart in a coat”. “People are asking questions about it and want to know whether Swamy will be checked”, he said. He added that Tharoor must be knowing who killed Sunanda. So I brought these to their notice. They can also do so.

On Brexit, he said it will have an “impact” on India because India is the largest investor in Britain and “I think our interests will have to be protected if Indian companies have to do well”.

On the outgoing Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan, he said Rajan had no formal degree in Economics and was just a B-Tech graduate and a management student from MIT. Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar had before the 2014 election come under fire for joking about Narendra Modi’s claim that he had worked in a tea shop.