Jaitley took to Twitter to deliver a scathing rebuttal to Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's assertion that there was no such thing as "ease of doing business" in India as demonetisation and GST, both flagship financial reforms of the NDA regime, had ruined the country's economy.
"The difference between the UPA and NDA - 'The ease of doing corruption has been replaced by the ease of doing business'," the finance minister said in his tweet.
The difference between the UPA and NDA-
— Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) 1509526950000Jaitley was alluding to the host of scams which were unearthed while the UPA-II had been in power - the Commonwealth Games scam, Coalgate and 2G scam, to name a few.
Earlier in the day, Rahul had taken a dig at "Dr Jaitley" with a pun on a famous ghazal by Ghalib to point out that the finance minister was deluding himself even as the country reeled from an economic crisis.
सबको मालूम है
— Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) 1509517159000The Congress leader advised Jaitley that instead of "sitting in his office and believing what foreigners say", he should speak to small-time businessmen about the state of their business in the aftermath of GST and scrapping of high value notes.
"The entire country will shout and say ease of doing business is absent, you have destroyed it, your demonetisation and GST have ruined it," Rahul said at a campaign rally in Gujarat.
According to the World Bank, India's rank on 'ease of doing business' scale has risen from 130 to 100 this year, helped by a slew of reforms in taxation, licensing, investor protection and bankruptcy resolution.
Addressing a press conference soon after the World Bank ranking was made public on Tuesday, Jaitley had said India is the only major country named for pursuing structural reforms.
Going on the offensive, Congress tore into the Modi government for its "policy adventurism" and said the jump in India's ranking would not change the reality of "widespread economic misery and distress".
(With inputs from PTI)
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