Arun Jaitley terms Gandhi family’s dealings with accused in 2G, NSEL scams as 'Congress' capital creation scheme’

Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday, while responding to media reports revealing the deals between Congress leaders and the two accused in the 2G and NSEL scams, said it was the Rahul Gandhi-led party’s ‘capital creation scheme’. Documents accessed by the Republic showed that Rahul had entered into a deal with 2G scam accused and Unitech founder Sanjay Chandra in 2010, at the time the case was being probed. It also revealed that the party chief and general secretary of Uttar Pradesh (East) Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had signed a lease agreement for a farmhouse in Delhi’s Mehrauli with a company owned by Jignesh Shah, an accused in the Rs 5,600 crore NSEL scam in 2013, the same time that the latter was being investigated in the case. [caption id=“attachment_6352131” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File photo of Arun Jaitley. PTI[/caption] Jaitley said that he personally read media reports and called these transactions ‘sweetheart deals’. He hit out Rahul’s involvement in these deals and said it would isn’t ‘rocket science to identify the scamsters’. “People in glass houses don’t throw stones (at others). If the (Congress) party thinks that they are the country’s first family, then they should be role models,” he said. The report said that Rahul and Priyanka leased the Mehrauli farmhouse to Shah’s company for a monthly rent of Rs 6.7 lakh, despite the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution serving a show cause notice to NSEL. According to the filings in Rahul Gandhi’s 2009 election affidavit, the property is at Rs 9.86 lakh. In October 2010, Rahul had signed a deal with Unitech to buy two office units in the real estate firm’s plush Gurgaon building for Rs 6.8 crore. Commenting on the vision of the document on national security handed over by Lt Gen (Retd) DS Hooda to Rahul, he said that the committee was ‘only for optics’. Jaitley’s attack came only a day after the finance minister criticised the Congress’ manifesto , calling the promises ‘dangerous and unimplementable’.