Swamy Fires At Jaitley Over Economic Advisor's Shoulder

NEW DELHI: Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy might be needling AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal and others, but he is certainly doing what the political pundits claimed he was brought in to do: needle Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

Swamy’s attack on the RBI Governor was interpreted by many close to the BJP, and within the party as well, as a direct offensive against Jaitley who being fairly suave and articulate in his politics had developed a good working relationship with Raghuram Rajan. However, he was unable to defend him with more than a weak statement while a visit out of the country as Swamy’s tirade had been met with complete silence by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The buzz within the party at the time was that Rajan’s exit had the top leadership’s support, and Swamy was thus being tacitly encouraged to raise the decibels.

Rajan announced his decision to leave office at the end of his term in September with the Finance Minister virtually silent on the development. Now Swamy has come out with a “Sack Him” series of tweets against the Chief Economic Advisor to the government Arvind Subramanian. He has questioned the economists position on Intellectual Property Rights in the audacious tweets, alleging that he was close to the Congress and had influenced its stand on the Goods and Service Tax Bill.

“Such people who can fail our government, such people should be tossed out. Now, it has been two years. He (Arvind) used to work in America, don’t even know if he’s a citizen or not but I’m sure he has a green card (sic),” Swamy said.

This was seen as a direct attack on Jaitley, who held a press conference just a while ago to defend Subramanian. He said that the government had “full confidence” in the Chief Economic Adviser who has “provided valuable insights from time to time.”Subramanian was amongst the names being mentioned for the post of RBI Governor. The BJP has distanced itself from these remarks with a statement maintaining, “BJP does not agree with Subramanian Swamy’s views on the government’s Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian. This is his personal opinion.”

Some of Swamys’ tweets that have created a stir in government circles. More so as he has this multi-million Twitter following with each of the following tweets registering approximate 1,3171,317 Retweets and 1,2041,204 likes. The last has not been heard on this issue clearly.

Who said to US Cong on 13/3/13 the US should act against India to defend US Pharmaceuticals interests? Arvind Subramanian MoF !! Sack him!!!

Guess who encouraged Congi to become rigid on GST clauses ? Jaitely's economic adviser Arvind Subramanian of Washington DC

Now PTs can understand why our core economic sectors could not perform last two years. Trojan horses galore in MoF/ Fin Institutions