Property tax issue: Amarinder hits back at Jaitley
Hitting back at his BJP rival Arun Jaitley for blaming him for the imposition of property tax in Punjab, Cong ress candidate from Amritsar Capt Amarinder Singh on Thursday said that the former should have checked his facts about the matter “before putting his foot in the mouth”.
Hitting back at his BJP rival Arun Jaitley for blaming him for the imposition of property tax in Punjab, Cong ress candidate from Amritsar Capt Amarinder Singh on Thursday said that the former should have checked his facts about the matter “before putting his foot in the mouth”.
“Nothing can be far from truth and as usual Mr Jaitely has resorted to an outright lie and ended up putting his foot in the mouth”, he said while rubbishing the senior BJP leader’s claims that the then Congress government, headed by Amarinder, had initiated the process for introduction of property tax in 2006.
Giving his account of the facts in this backdrop, Amarinder said that the World Bank had put certain conditions before giving loan to the state for developmental purposes. He said there were some discussions at the bureaucratic level between the state and the central government in 2006.
However, the Congress leader categorically stated that the state cabinet during his tenure as the chief minister did not give its approval to impose property tax in Punjab.
He said that later the SAD-BJP government started negotiations in this regard and finally they approved the property tax in 2013. “Better check who was in power in 2013”, he told Jaitely.
“It defies any logic and common sense that someone like Mr Jaitely should blame me for a decision taken after six years of my demitting the chief minister’s office”, he remarked, while advising his opponent “not to spread lies, as you can’t befool all the people all the time”.