Finance Minister Arun Jaitley chose to stay mum on Lalit Modi here, saying he did not “want to comment” on the controversy raging back home, with the Opposition mounting massive protests over External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s help to the tainted former IPL chief.
Asked why Prime Minister Narendra Modi was silent on the issue and whether Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje would resign following allegations of backing the former IPL chief’s U.K. immigration plea secretly, Mr. Jaitley said he did not “want to comment on him [Lalit Modi]”.
However, to another question, Mr. Jaitley said Mr. Modi’s Rs. 11-crore transaction with the BJP leader and Ms. Raje’s son Dushyant Singh was a “commercial” one. “I do not want to comment on him, but it’s a commercial transaction between two individuals,” Mr. Jaitley said at a press conference here on Saturday. “How the government could be concerned with a several year-old loan transaction between ... which is a commercial loan transaction by cheque with all banking approvals in a declared loan transaction.”
Asked if India should enact legislation to avoid the kind of conflict of interests which triggered the current controversy, the Minister said: “Parliament has some regulations on [conflict of interests] and they keep reviewing them from time to time.”
