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Jaitley likely to meet PM Modi today, discuss China and Swamy issues

by IBNS 27 Jun 2016, 10:35 am

New Delhi, June 27 (IBNS) Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is likely to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday evening after he came back to the capital cutting short by a day his China visit.

Media reports said  media reports said apart from briefing the PM on what transpired during his visit to China, Jaitley is expected to raise the issue of unrelenting tirade BJP MP Subramanian Swamy has unleashed against him and the officials of his ministry.

Reports, however, quoted officials sources as saying that the meeting has nothing to do with the Swamy issue.

Jaitley, who began a five-day visit to China on June 24 primarily to attend the first meeting of the Board of Governors of the $100-billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), returned here on Sunday night.

The BJP leadership is said to be upset over  Swamy’s open attacks on  Jaitley and top bureaucrats. Swamy's threat of a "bloodbath" and other innuendos aimed at Jaitley are not going down well among the people, the party leaders feel.

Last week,  Swamy, 76, took to the Twitter to attack Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian, who is the top aide to the Finance Minister, accusing him of siding with the US in a row over intellectual property rights before he joined the government.

 Jaitley told reporters that it is unfair to attack those in government “whose discipline and constraints of office restrain them from responding”. In a tweet, the minister also countered  Swamy comment against another bureaucrat,  Shaktikanta Das, describing it as “an unfair and false attack on a disciplined civil servant” in the Finance Ministry.