Jaitley rakes up Sonia’s foreign origin to counter outsider charge

BJP leader Arun Jaitley on Sunday hit back at his rival Amarinder Singh for dubbing him an ‘outsider’ in Amritsar, asking the Congress leader as to which state does his party chief Sonia Gandhi belong.

‘Despite my ancestral roots in Punjab, Captain Sahib (Amarider) called me an ‘outsider’ and a ‘pseudo’ Punjabi. Will he be kind enough to tell me which state in India does (Congress president) Sonia Gandhi belong to? Jaitley wrote on his website.

‘Regrettably, he is resorting to his old USP – lower the level of debate through personalised and discourteous language.... I have to resist the temptation of reciprocating in the same manner. However, a polite response is necessary,’ Jaitley wrote on his website.

The former Punjab chief minister is pitted against Jaitley in the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat.

He said Singh has still not come to the constituency.

Jaitley also said that after winning the polls, he will have both office and residential base in Amritsar.

‘But will he ever be available to the people of Amritsar at all. Past experience shows that he has been inaccessible not only to the people but also to his own party leaders including his ministers. His availability is only for a few hours since otherwise his palace is always inaccessible to the common man,’ said the BJP leader.

Jaitley was responding to Singh’s poser whether he will shift to Amritsar if he wins the seat.

Lashing out at Jaitley for his fresh salvos against Sonia Gandhi, Congress leader Amarinder Singh on Sunday reminded him of Indian tradition where daughter-in-law is the ‘real inheritor’ of the family legacy.

‘I always thought Jaitley was a gentleman, but I am sorry to read about his shameless attempts to question the statehood of Gandhi when she had nothing to do about what I had said yesterday in a newspaper interview about Jaitley,’ the former chief minister said in a statement.

‘But let me remind Jaitley of our great Indian culture and tradition which accepts the daughters-in-law as the real inheritors of the house and not the daughters irrespective of which place they come from,’ the Congress candidate from Amritsar said while hitting back at Jaitley.

‘Sonia Gandhi was married to late Rajiv Gandhi 45 years ago and she obviously belongs to UP and India,’ Singh said.

‘Every time you (BJP) have tried to rake up this issue (Sonia’s origin issue) you have badly lost as people of the country have repeatedly rejected your chauvinistic and xenophobic rabble rousing,’ he said.