BJP Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy and Union finance minister Arun Jaitley are known to be old political rivals. A section in the BJP claimed that Mr Jaitley was “not comfortable with the idea” of nominating Dr Swamy to the Rajya Sabha. Mr Jaitley has also not reportedly liked Dr Swamy’s repeated tirade against the RBI governor.
The Congress however, alleged that the PM had employed a ploy to sideline the finance minister and was using Dr Rajan as a ruse. “PM Narendra Modi never had any faith either in democratic values or in constitutional statutory institutions. The BJP and the RSS always want to weaken constitutional and statutory institutions and that is why Subramanian Swamy was brought in as part of the conspiracy,” Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said.
Accusing the PM of having no faith in his Cabinet colleagues, the Congress leader added that earlier external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, Union home minister Rajnath Singh and other Union ministers were sidelined, and now it was the finance minister’s turn.
“As they say in Hindi, Raghuram Rajan to bahana hai, Arun Jaitley nishana hai. We deprecate and condemn this systematic attack on constitutional institutions. Rajan, who is a great economist and has done commendable work for this country, is taking strict action against bank defaulters,” Mr Surjewala added.
He claimed there was another reason: that the PM was worried that his “crony” friends are going to face severe action for defaulting of repayments to banks. “Modiji, stop attacking constitutional institutions, stop using and misusing individuals like Swamy to decimate the authority and authenticity of institutions because the whole country is watching you,” said the Congress leader.
Another Congress spokesman, Manish Tewari, said, “It is not an attack on an individual but an institution, perhaps for the first time in 67 years... They are sending a message, ‘If you don’t play ball, we’ll hound you’ ... Why is the PM silent Why hasn’t he spoken The silence is deafening. An attack on the governor of the RBI is unprecedented.”
Mr Tewari felt the attack on Dr Rajan could be linked to some crony capitalists close to the NDA government who are “scared” that their names might come up as the RBI has directed banks to declare the quantum of NPAs so the “extent of the rot can be exposed”.
“Another angle to the attack is that it could be aimed at the governor, but the real target can be the finance minister,” he said, adding that the BJP government is the “slayer of institutions”.
