'Rent a cause campaign': Arun Jaitley takes a jibe at Opposition

New Delhi, Apr 13: Targeting the grand alliance, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday put out a fresh blog titled "India's Opposition is on a 'Rent a Cause' Campaign".

"There is no leader, no Gathbandhan, no Common Minimum Programme and no real issue. Not surprisingly there are not many takers for a "failed campaign". It is 'Rent a Cause' Campaign," Jaitley said.

"On the leadership issue, the situation looks gloomier than what I had thought. The BSP leader Mayawati, the Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee leave no stone unturned in running down the Congress president," he added.

"To "oust a popular Government, an extremely popular Prime Minister, you need some real issues, not fictional issues", Jaitley said that the Opposition had "wasted the past two years... manufacturing issues which don't exist".

"The false campaign on Rafale didn't carry much weight. Loan waiver to industrialists was a lie, the EVM as an instrument of rigging was a bigger lie. Now that they are in the midst of the campaign for over a month what is the issue which they are able to focus on," Jaitley wrote.

"This is the plight of the opposition campaign," he wrote, adding, "One day Pulwama was questioned as self-engineered. The next day Balakot was questioned as a non-existent operation."

Now that they are in the midst of the campaign for over a month what is the issue which they are able to focus on?

He was referring to the February 14 Pulwama suicide bombing in which 40 CRPF jawans had been killed. The attack had been followed by an air strike by the Indian Air Force on a Jaish-e-Mohammed training facility at Balakot in Pakistan.