Lalitgate: Govt slams Cong in LS; Rahul says PM 'does not have guts'

The Congress party’s campaign for resignation of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in Parliament on Wednesday came to a naught as the minister made a spirited defence and was backed by the government, which said a "mountain was made out of what was not even a mole hill".

Lok Sabha, on the penultimate day of the Monsoon session which has been virtually washed out, took up a discussion on Lalit Modi issue and saw spirited arguments and counter arguments between treasury and opposition benches.

Congress, which had moved the adjournment motion for the discussion, rubbished Swaraj's argument that she had helped Lalit Modi on "humanitarian" grounds, with Rahul questioning as to how much money the minister had received in lieu.

Rahul, who spoke briefly, said the Indian Premier League was the "Centre" of black money and the "symbol" of black money was Lalit Modi whom the government was trying to save.

Read the entire transcript for Rahul Gandhi's speech HERE.

As Narendra Modi was not present in the House during the discussion, the Congress Vice President said the prime minister "does not have guts" to face the House.

The motion moved by Congress was defeated by a voice vote in the absence of the main opposition party which staged a walkout when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley began to reply.

Hitting back at Congress for targeting Swaraj in a sustained manner, Jaitley said she had been made a "scapegoat of a pretext" as the main reason for disrupting Parliament was to "sabotage the Indian growth story" by stalling reform legislations like GST.

He ruled out Swaraj's resignation, saying she had done nothing wrong and the Congress had created a "cloud" of a "scandal" which did not exist.

Making a scathing attack on Rahul, Jaitley said the Congress Vice President is "an expert without knowledge" and asked him not to "make a monkey out of the country" by holding up an entire session of Parliament.

To read the entire transcript of Arun Jaitley's response, click HERE.

"A mountain is being made out of what is not even a mole hill," he said, while insisting that the former UPA government had done nothing in concrete terms to bring back Lalit Modi.

He also hit out at Rahul for questioning the role of Swaraj's lawyer daughter, saying, "there are still some honest people whose children have to work for a living. There are other people who, for generations in politics, have not worked for a living. They have learnt the art of living comfortably without working."

Earlier, Swaraj, while intervening in the debate, tore into Congress, saying it had helped Bofors accused Ottavio Quattrocchi and Bhopal gas leak accused Warren Anderson in fleeing India and roped in Rajiv Gandhi in this regard.

She specifically responded to Rahul's charge that she had got money to help Lalit Modi, telling him to ask his "mamma" as to "how much money had been taken from Quattrocchi" and "why did 'daddy' (Rajiv Gandhi) get released the killer of 15,000 people (in Bhopal gas leak)," an apparent reference to Anderson.

Another issue for the constitution bench to decide is whether a special category of sentence could be provided for cases where death penalty might be substituted by imprisonment for life or imprisonment for a term in excess of 14 years and to put that category beyond application of remission.

The bench will also decide whether the Union or the State has primacy over the subject matter enlisted in concurrent list of 7th Schedule of the Constitution for exercise of power of remission.

During the hearing, Centre said that repeated mercy pleas before the President and the Governor by convicts seeking remission or commutation of their sentences violate the principle of finality.

It had also asserted that the killers of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi did nor deserve any mercy as the assassination was the result of a conspiracy involving foreign nationals.

Tamil Nadu government, on other had, asserted the states have power to grant remission under the law and trashed accusations that its decision to release seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case was "political and arbitrary".

The state government had wanted to know as to why Congress governments at the centre delayed the decision on their mercy pleas that led to commutation of their death sentence in the first place.

Jethmalani, appearing for one of the convicts, had sought dismissal of Centre's plea, contending that the citizens could file writ petitions for enforcement of their fundamental rights and "Union of India is not a citizen but State under Article 12; it has no such rights vested in it".

"The present petition is not maintainable for additional reason that it seeks to challenge the correctness of a final judgement of this court through a writ petition under Article 32", he had said.

The apex court had on February 20 last year stayed the state government's decision to release three convicts -- Murugan, Santhan and Arivu, whose death sentence had been commuted to life term by it two days before.

It had later also stayed the release of four other convicts -- Nalini, Robert Pious, Jayakumar and Ravichandran, saying there were procedural lapses on part of the state government.

Santhan, Murugan and Arivu are currently lodged in the Central Prison, Vellore. The other four are also undergoing life sentence for their role in Gandhi's assassination on May 21, 1991 in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu.

Recently, the apex court has dismissed the curative petition of the Centre filed against the commutation of death penalty into life imprisonment of three convicts in the case, granting a fresh lease of life to them.

The review pleas, challenging the commutation of death penalty to life term of Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan, had been dismissed by the court in February last year on the ground of 11-year delay in deciding their mercy petitions.

What did Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, say in the House. Read the entire transcript HERE.

Image: Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi appeared in Lok Sabha to speak out against the prime minister. Photograph: PTI/ Lok Sabha TV