Those responsible for ordinance should resign: Jaitley

Terms Rahul's opposition "a desperate damage-control exercise"

BJP leader Arun Jaitley today said those responsible in the government for the ordinance on convicted lawmakers should resign in the wake of Rahul Gandhi's denunciation of the move.

"All I can say, this is highly belated realisation of what constitutes nonsense and if the Congress party genuinely believes that this is nonsense, then the heads which have produced this nonsense twice in a month before this country... this is the question of governance... Then will those heads remain or will those heads roll?," Jaitley said.

He was reacting to the Congress Vice President's statement that the ordinance should be "torn up and thrown away".

Taking a dig at the Nehru-Gandhi family on the matter, he said, "If the heads don't roll, then this is only a grandstanding, a charade... Intended to only establish... Well the government makes mistakes, rest of the world makes mistakes, but the first family of the Congress doesn't make mistakes."

Jaitley termed as "a desperate damage-control exercise" Gandhi's opposition to the ordinance.

"In the last few days, there has been a national revulsion against this ordinance. Let us not forget that the subject matter of allowing the convicted politician to be a part of the legislative bodies has been approved by the UPA cabinet twice-- first as a bill and now as an ordinance," he said.

On both occasions, the Congress party has supported it, he said.

"They have not opposed it. So it is not that till today the Congress was unaware of this. And in fact, the Parliament session was extended by a day to enable this to be passed," Jaitley said.

It was only because of the opposition and Parliament that the bill was referred to the standing committee and not approved, he said.