Former Chief Minister and Congress candidate Capt Amarinder Singh today said that the BJP candidate Arun Jaitley was repeatedly resorting to half truths like a “third rate liar” in the hope that it might be taken as truth. He said, whether it was the issue of property tax or the statement about Jagdish Tytler, a desperate and frustrated Jaitley was trying to distort and twist facts as he had nothing else to speak on.He also lashed out at the language Jaitley has been using in his campaign diary against him. “His (Jaitley’s) mask of decency is wearing off and he has started betraying his frustration and arrogance”, he said, while referring to today’s diary, adding, “I leave it for the people to read it and judge who is bringing down the level of the discourse and who is rude and discourteous”.
Capt Amarinder said, Jaitley was feeling frustrated as his rallies were either not drawing any response or were being cancelled and so much so he had to get film stars and singers to get the crowds. “His frustration is understandable”, he remarked, while adding, “to understand is to forgive and I forgive him all his indiscretions as any person in his situation may have to do the same”.Referring to Jaitley’s claims that he had given an undertaking in December 2006 on property tax, Capt Amarinder said, “like a typical third rate liar Jaitley was hiding the fact that it was not me, but the Chief Secretary who had written to the government of India and when the proposal came to the cabinet we did not approve it”.
He asked, “if it was so that I approved the property tax then why did your government need to impose it again in 2013”. He said, Jaitely’s claims defy all logic and common sense. “Everybody knows that the Akali-BJP imposed the property tax in 2013 and now, like a third rate liar, he is saying it was done in 2006. “If it was done in 2006 then people should have been paying the taxes since then”, he pointed out.Capt Amarinder said, even the state BJP president Kamal Sharma had admitted on record that their government was under compulsion to impose the property tax as the state had no money. “And still Jaitley will desperately try to make everybody believe that it was me who imposed the property tax”, he remarked.On the Jagdish Tytler issue, Capt Amarinder reiterated that he had only stated what people had told him. “I have nowhere given clean chit to Tytler but only said that none of the riot victims I met immediately after the riots named him”, he asserted, while adding, “Jaitley as a lawyer should know it that giving a clean chit or holding someone guilty is for the courts to decide and not someone like me”.