The spat between Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and BJP Leader Yashwant Sinha deepened on Friday. “I may have been the worst Finance Minister after 1991, but I did not commit fraud,” Mr. Sinha said in a statement on Friday. “Mr. Chidambaram has been the cleverest Finance Minister since 1991 and has played fraud on the budget not only this year but always.”
Mr. Sinha was reacting to >Mr. Chidambaram’s comments at a press briefing at Congress headquarters on Thursday where he had said that the BJP leader’s performance as Finance Minister “was such that he had to demit the office on July 1, 2002”. “I may point out that 2000-01 and 2002-03 were the worst years since liberalisation in terms of growth and Prime Minister Vajpayee was forced to replace the Finance Minister,” Mr. Chidambaram had said. “I thought Mr. Sinha would be happy to remain a distant memory for the people of India, however, he seems determined to remain relevant in his party.”
Earlier, in April, Mr. Sinha and Mr. Chidambaram had made similar remarks about each other’s tenures as Finance Minister. The two sparring Finance Ministers have been debating amongst other issues the true fiscal deficit, or excess of government expenditure over its income, for India.
In Friday’s statement, Mr. Sinha clarified remarks he made earlier this week in a newspaper interview about Mr. Chidambaram: “I said that the seeds of the present economic crisis were sown by Mr. Chidambaram himself in 2008-09…. I also added that the liberties which were taken with the fiscal then were still bothering us and that Mr. Chidambaram’s claim that he had restricted the fiscal deficit to 4.6 per cent of the GDP in 2013-14 was questionable”.
He stated that he had also added that Mr. Chidambaram “had played fraud in the interim budget and that the next government should come out with a white paper to expose his lies”. Mr. Sinha further stated that Mr. Chidambaram had in his 1997-98 budget targeted a fiscal deficit of 4.5 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product, however, the target was missed and the figure had ballooned to 5.8 per cent in the subsequent year’s budget.
The expenditure figures released by The Comptroller General of Accounts of the Ministry of Finance for April – February 2013-14 show that in actual numbers the fiscal deficit has exceeded Mr. Chidambaram’s revised estimates presented in February 2014 by a “whopping” Rs. 74,760 crore (from Rs. 524539 crore to Rs. 599299 crore), Mr. Sinha said. “Within six weeks the veracity of the figures presented by Mr. Chidambaram has been questioned by his own agency. Instead of challenging me on facts, Mr. Chidambaram has decided to attack me personally,” Mr. Sinha stated.