NEW DELHI: Armed with fodder provided by Jayanthi Natarajan, BJP today accused the Congress of practising "crony capitalism" and running UPA government through "remote control", saying its assertions during Lok Sabha poll campaign stand vindicated.
The party also sought a relook at environmental clearances made during the previous regime in the wake of the former Environment Minister accusing Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi of interference in clearances for projects.
BJP also hit out at Rahul saying he was the "supervisor" of the factory that "manufactured policy paralysis" due to which the country's economy was hurt. It also accused the opposition party of practicing a policy of "sadistic" economy by "teaching a lesson" to some and favouring some and demanded that it come out clean on the issue.
"The UPA was a practitioner of sadistic economy and crony capitalism, where it was vindictive in nature and wanting to teach a lesson to some people and wanted to favour some...This obviously had to be for corrupt and collateral reasons," Finance Minister and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley charged.
He said what weighed with them was the "whims" of political leaders of the party as to who is to be granted environmental permission and who is to be denied this.
Minister of State for Commerce Nirmala Sitharaman said, "That the government's decisions were very selectively manipulated for the party's interests and the party was interfering in every decision the government was taking have all now been established."
She said, "Clearly the Congress party has been encouraging crony capitalism. It is for the Congress party to come clean on this matter as no clarification can explain it." BJP Spokesperson Sambit Patra said, "what 'Jayanti letter' means is that Rahul Gandhi was the supervisor of the factory where 'Policy Paralysis' was manufactured."
He said, "Manmohan Singh should take cue from 'Jayanti letter' and write a similar letter exposing the dictations of Sonia Gandhi on the Coalgate scam."
Minister of State for Environment Prakash Javadekar termed the charge of Jayanthi as a "serious issue" and said he would review the files where allegations of extraneous influence have been mentioned.
"The revelations made by Jayanthi Natarajan in her letter to Sonia Gandhi, which have become public today, are a matter of great concern and is a serious issue," he said.
Javadekar said as environment minister, it is his duty to review those specific files where extraneous influence has been alleged as per the letter. "I will definitely review those files and see what are the facts," he said.
Earlier Jaitley said, "I hope the Environment ministry now will go into each of these permissions which were granted and not granted and make sure that these are expeditiously dealt with only as per law and no other consideration."
He said government should review all such projects afresh to find out whether permissions were being granted or held up for collateral reasons as a result of which the country's economy had suffered.
Sitharaman also said that it is appropriate time to review every decision which was taken at the time at least to see what the government had done.
She said the impression and the image of India has been of "red-tape ridden" and the new government is striving hard to remove such image internationally.
The Commerce Minister said just one expose itself has revealed what kind of governance Congress party has given.
"Is this the kind of governance where you have somebody at the front and somebady at the back and you are running government through remote control. I think the Congress party's governance formula has come under severe thrashing. It is for them now to answer," she said.
Patra said, "The revelations by Jayanthi confirms that there was no government and a family syndicate was running the country and asking Ministers to liaise with NGOs to tweak laws," he said.
Jayanthi earlier mounted a scathing attack on Rahul Gandhi, claiming that she followed his directions on green nod to projects but was "vilified, humiliated and sidelined" by central leadership and announced quitting the party.