Edited by Deepali Verma
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently taking a dig at Congress said that the previous regime was a “rudderless and leaderless” one and Sonia Gandhi acted as the “Super Prime Minister”.
Comparing the economy under the Congress-led UPA from 2004 to 2014 and the BJP-led NDA since then, Ms Sitharaman further dug into Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over the 2013 incident when he ‘tore up’ an ordinance that was proposed by the Manmohan Singh government. The finance minister labelled him arrogant and called out his act of insulting “his own Prime Minister”.
After speaking on the scams that took place under the UPA government and stating that her government pulled out the Indian economy from the ‘Fragile Five’ category, the finance minister said the genesis of the problems and mismanagement during the previous government’s rule lay in the leadership issue.
Continuing in Hindi, she said, “Leadership was the heart of the problem. The rudderless, leaderless leadership was responsible for the focal point of the UPA’s mismanagement, its scam-driven for 10 years. Mrs Sonia Gandhi was the Super Prime Minister as the chairperson of the National Advisory Council (NAC) – an extra-constitutional and unaccountable person.”
Ms Sitharaman claimed that there was additional pressure on governance as Mrs Gandhi got extra-constitutional authority as the chairperson of the NAC, which was set up as an advisory board for the prime minister. She informed that 710 files were given to the NAC for “permission” by the government. “It was unaccountable, unanswerable power… why were 710 files sent to the NAC,” she asked.
The finance minister brought up the 2013 incident involving Rahul Gandhi and said, “Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was abroad. During which, Rahul Gandhi tore up an ordinance and tossed it at a press conference. Isn’t that insulting one’s own prime minister? He was extremely arrogant and did not care for his own prime minister. They now shout about institutions and give us lectures,” she thundered.
2013 Press Conference
After the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2013 that MPs and MLAs convicted with a minimum two-year sentence would be immediately disqualified and they won’t get three months to appeal, as they did previously. At the time, the Manmohan Singh government brought out an ordinance to overturn the judgement.
Mr Gandhi called the ordinance “complete nonsense” and remarked at a press conference, “I am of the opinion that what the government is doing on the ordinance is wrong. It was a political decision and every party does this. There is a time to stop this nonsense… and if we actually want to stop corruption then we cannot make these compromises.”
He thundered that the ordinance should be “torn and thrown out” and then proceeded to tear a piece of paper in front of the cameras.
