Jaitley calls Rahul 'Clown Prince'; Cong hits back, dubs BJP leader 'court jester'

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley Thursday called Congress president Rahul Gandhi a "Clown Prince" and the opposition party hit back to dub the senior BJP leader as a "court jester" in bitter personal attacks over Rafale deal, NPAs and waiving loans of industrialists.

As the rival parties accused each other of resorting to falsehood and lies, the Congress also demanded Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's resignation for allegedly "misleading" the people on the Rafale deal. Gandhi accusing the minister of "lying" on HAL's capability to build the jet fighters, saying her position is untenable.

In a hard hitting Facebook blog titled "Falsehood of a 'Clown Prince'" to reply to Gandhi's charges made during his political rallies, Jaitley accused him of "lying" about Modi government waiving Rs 2.5 lakh crore of loans of 15 industrialists. He asserted not a single rupee of any debtor has been waived by the BJP government.

Loans to the country's 12 defaulters were given out prior to 2014 and it was only the present government which was making recoveries, he said, adding defaulters are losing their companies and assets as they are being auctioned to recover dues.

"You lied on the Rafale deal, you lied on the Non Performing Assets(NPAs). Your temperament to concoct facts raises a legitimate question do people whose natural preference is falsehood deserve to be a part of the public discourse," he said.

"The world's largest democracy must seriously introspect whether public discourse should be allowed to be polluted by the falsehood of a 'Clown Prince'."
"If the 'Rafale concoctions' were the first big lie, the second one stated repeatedly is that Mr Modi waived off Rs 2.50 lakh crores of 15 industrialists. Every word of that sentence repeatedly uttered by Rahul Gandhi is false."
The Congress on its part accused Jaitley of "lying" on the issue of NPAs and dubbed him as a "court jester" writing "wasteful" blogs,