New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday demanded the resignation of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley over allegations by liquor baron Vijay Mallya that he had met the Jaitley before taking a flight to London in March 2016. Jaitley has denied the claim.
Some of the questions Gandhi raised in a press conference was if Jaitley did have a meeting with Mallya why did he not inform the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Enforcement Directorate (ED) or the police. Gandhi also questioned why an arrest notice was converted into an inform arrest.
“This is an open and shut case…it is a clear-cut case of collusion. There is some deal between them. The FM must resign and the matter should be investigated,” Gandhi told reporters at the Congress party’s central headquarters.
“An absconder tells the FM he is leaving the country. Why did the FM not inform the CBI, ED or police? Another question is who converted an arrest notice into inform notice?” Gandhi asked.
Jaitley in a post on Facebook on Wednesday evening wrote: “The statement is factually false in as much as it does not reflect truth. Since 2014, I have never given him any appointment to meet me and the question of his having met me does not arise. However, since he was a member of Rajya Sabha and he occasionally attended the House, he misused that privilege on one occasion while I was walking out of the House to go to my room.”
Gandhi’s press conference, his second in a fortnight with an earlier one on the Rafale deal, sought to corner both Jaitley and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Gandhi said the party’s senior leader and parliamentarian P L Punia was ‘proof’ that the meeting took place.
“On 1 March 2016, when I was in Central Hall of Parliament House, I witnessed the finance minister and Vijay Mallya talking. On 3 March, we heard from the media that he fled the country on 2 March, 2016… There is CCTV footage from that day and it should be reviewed,” Punia, who was also present in the media briefing, told reporters.
“Rahul Gandhi has gone on the back foot over Kingfisher Airlines. Sometimes it seems the airlines wasn’t owned by Vijay Mallya but by the Gandhi family in proxy,” Sambit Patra, spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), told reporters on Thursday.
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