Rahul concocting lies about Rafale, NPA: Jaitley

NEW DELHI, dhns: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday took to Facebook again to attack Congress president Rahul Gandhi saying much like Rafale, he has lied about Prime Minister Narendra Modi waiving Rs 2.5 lakh crore of loans of 15 industrialists.

Jaitley said loans to the country's 12 defaulters were given out prior to 2014 and were only being recovered now. He also issued afresh a list of the 12 defaulters.

"You lied on the Rafale deal, you lied on the NPAs. Your temperament to concoct facts raises a legitimate question – do people whose natural preference is falsehood deserve to be a part of the public discourse," Jaitley wrote in a blog titled - Falsehood of a 'Clown Prince'.

"The world's largest democracy must seriously introspect whether public discourse should be allowed to be polluted by the falsehood of a 'Clown Prince'," the finance minister said.

"In mature democracies, those who rely on falsehood are considered unfit for public life. Many have been banished from political activity because they were caught lying. But this rule obviously can't apply to a dynastic organisation like Congress party," he said.

On NPA issue, he said the then UPA government was in “complicity” as the loans were inadequately scruitinised.

"In 2015, an asset quality review (AQR) was conducted by the Reserve Bank of India and as a result of AQR and subsequent transparent recognition by banks it was found that the NPAs were actually Rs 8.96 lakh crore and the real amount was being hidden," he said, adding that the UPA never took effective steps that could result in recovery or reduction of the NPAs.

The RBI, in the first instalment, identified 12 major defaulters. These 12 defaulters, towards principal interest and penal interest, jointly owed about Rs 3 lakh crore to various banks. The banks under UPA took no steps to recover these loans. They did not prosecute a single major debtor who had siphoned off money," he said.