Jaitley resorting to half truths like a 'third rate liar': Amarinder Singh

Former Punjab chief minister and Congress candidate from Amritsar Captain Amarinder Singh has said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Arun Jaitley is repeatedly resorting to half truths like a 'third rate liar' in the hope that it might be taken as the truth.

He said whether it was the issue of property tax or the statement about Jagdish Tytler, a desperate and frustrated Jaitley is trying to distort facts, as he had nothing else to speak on.

He also lashed out at the language Jaitley has been using in his campaign diary against him.

"His (Jaitley's) mask of decency is wearing off and he has started betraying his frustration and arrogance", he said, while referring to today's diary, adding, "I leave it for the people to read it and judge who is bringing down the level of the discourse and who is rude and discourteous".

"His frustration is understandable. To understand is to forgive and I forgive him all his indiscretions, as any person in his situation may have to do the same," Singh said.

Referring to Jaitley's claims that he had given an undertaking in December 2006 on property tax, Singh said, "like a typical third rate liar Jaitley was hiding the fact that it was not me, but the Chief Secretary who had written to the government of India and when the proposal came to the cabinet we did not approve it."

He asked, "If it was so that I approved the property tax, then why did your government need to impose it again in 2013".

He said Jaitley's claims defy all logic and common sense, and added, "Everybody knows that the Akali-BJP imposed the property tax in 2013 and now, like a third rate liar, he is saying it was done in 2006. If it was done in 2006 then people should have been paying the taxes since then."

Singh said, even state BJP president Kamal Sharma had admitted on record that their government was under compulsion to impose the property tax, as the state had no money.

"And still, Jaitley will desperately try to make everybody believe that it was me who imposed the property tax", he remarked.

On the Jagdish Tytler issue, Singh said he had only stated what the people had told him.

"I have nowhere given clean chit to Tytler, but only said that none of the riot victims I met immediately after the riots named him", he asserted, while adding, "Jaitley as a lawyer should know it that giving a clean chit or holding someone guilty is for the courts to decide and not someone like me.