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Headlines

Would have been a better Finance Minister than Jaitley, says Swamy

New Delhi, Sep 17 

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy said on Saturday that he would have been a better Finance Minister than Arun Jaitley.

"Jaitley is only a lawyer while I am an economist. It is self-evident who would make a better Finance Minister," Swamy said here at India Today's Mind Rocks summit.

Swamy's remarks came after AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi asked him to comment on how he would not have let the inflation rate be as high as it is today.

Swamy has been critical of Jaitley and has been attacking him indirectly in the recent past.

Asked by the moderator why there is an "India-Pakistan like tension" between him and Jaitley, Swamy said there has always been a tussle between "south and north Indian Brahmins".

While Swamy is from Tamil Nadu, Jaitley is from Delhi with roots in Punjab.

In an implicit attack on Jaitley, Swamy had tweeted in June: "People giving me unasked for advice of discipline and restraint don't realise that if I disregard discipline, there would be a bloodbath."

Though the Rajya Sabha MP did not name Jaitley, his tweet followed Jaitley's public admonition of Swamy after the latter called for the sacking of Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian.

Jaitley had said: "The party has said it doesn't share Swamy's view. I will also add one more fact from the point of view of discipline of Indian politicians...to what extent should we attack those, the discipline and constraint of whose offices prevent them from responding and this has happened more than once."

A few days later Swamy urged the BJP leadership to ask ministers to wear traditional Indian clothes when they go abroad.

"BJP should direct our ministers to wear traditional and modernised Indian clothes while abroad. In coat and tie they look like waiters," he wrote.

Jaitley's photographs of meeting with the Bank of China Chairman in Beijing in a lounge suit appeared in several newspapers on Friday morning.