'India suffered because UPA practiced sadistic economy': Jaitley

In light of former union minister Jayanthi Natarajan's letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi while quitting the party, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday stated that India suffered in recent years due to the 'sadistic' economy practiced by the UPA government.

"When whims overtake legal requirements, this becomes a textbook case of crony capitalism and this is exactly what the UPA government was practicing. The UPA was a practitioner of sadistic economy. It was vindictive in nature, wanting to teach some people a lesson and wanting to favour some people. This obviously had to be corrupt and for collateral reasons and this is precisely why India suffered in the last few years," Jaitley told mediapersons.

"I hope that the environmental ministry now will go into each of these permissions and make sure that they are expeditiously dealt with only as per law and no other considerations," he added.

Jaitley further linked the UPA economic policies to Natarajan's letter of resignation.

"In today's newspapers, a letter written by the former environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan to the Congress president has been published. What was so far rumoured has been established to be true. Any government which administers the country, its foremost responsibility is to administer the economy of the country," he stated.

"The growth rates had rapidly gone down during the UPA government, and one of the prime reasons was that there was a delay in approval being granted to projects. Projects worth lakhs of crores were held up for lack of permissions. Today's letter conclusively establishes that it was not the statutory conditions that weighed with the ruling party and the government but what weighed with them was the whims of the political leaders of the party as to who is to be granted an environmental position," he added.

Earlier in the day, an English daily published a letter by Natarajan to Sonia Gandhi, dated November 2014, in which she had stated that she was quitting the Congress due to 'political interference' and alleged that she received 'specific requests' from party vice president Rahul Gandhi on environmental clearances.