Finance Minister Arun Jaitley speaks in the Lok Sabha
"The government rejects all the charges, the question of Sushma Swaraj's resignation does not arise," said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, bringing to a close an acrimonious debate on 'Lalitgate,' a controversy that paralysed the entire monsoon session.
The Congress walked out of the Lok Sabha while Mr Jaitley was speaking and the adjournment motion moved by it against foreign minister Sushma Swaraj was defeated by voice vote.
Mr Jaitley replied to the debate in a dismissal of the Congress' demand that Prime Minister Narendra Modi speak on the issue. PM Modi did not even come to the House during the discussion, which was punctuated with slogans raised against him, Ms Swaraj and the government by opposition lawmakers.
Mr Jaitley accused the Congress of raking up what he called a non-issue to stall the government's big reform, the Goods and Services Tax, which will not get passed in the monsoon session and so could miss a crucial implementation deadline.
"My entire sympathies are with Sushmaji because she is a pretext, a scapegoat - the reason was they wanted to prevent the GST," he said, accusing the Congress of creating obstacles in the path of the country's economic growth.
"In order to sabotage the Indian growth story, your best bet was let me go back on what we had promised - the GST. Without an issue, you hold up Parliament, waste a session," Mr Jaitley said, also making an attack on Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi who spoke just before him, saying, "The difficulty with Mr Rahul Gandhi is that he is an expert without knowledge."
The Congress ensured with its unrelenting protests that the government could do little work in the monsoon session which ends tomorrow.
The debate today began at the insistence of Ms Swaraj, whose resignation the Congress wants for assisting Lalit Modi get papers to travel out of UK last year.
"I repeat I committed no mistake," Ms Swaraj said.