NEW DELHI (TIP): BJP MP Subramanian Swamy on June 23 appeared to target Economic Affairs Secretary, Shaktikanta Das, which prompted Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to call it an “unfair and false” attack. Hurling veiled charges at Das, Swamy, in a morning post on his Twitter handle, said there is a “property deal case pending against him (Das) for assisting PC (Congress leader P Chidambaram) swallow Mahabalipuram prime locations”.

The Rajya Sabha member demanded that Das, an IAS officer of the 1980 batch, be repatriated to Tamil Nadu, his home cadre.

Jaitley, who is on a five-day official trip to China, tweeted: “An unfair and false attack on a disciplined civil servant in the finance ministry”.

The finance minister had earlier stated that political leaders should refrain from taking on officers restrained by their office compulsions.

Das is the latest among the senior bureaucrats and technocrats Swamy has targeted of late, which is turning out to be an embarrassment to the BJP.

On Wednesday, Swamy took on Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian, demanding that he be sacked for taking an anti-India position on the Intellectual Property Rights issue at the United Nations. He had also charged Subramanian with encouraging the Congress party to take a stiff stand on the GST Bill, which is still pending in Parliament.

Jaitley had defended Subramanian saying the CEA enjoyed “full confidence” of the government and his advices on several occasions had been of “great value”. When asked to comment on Jaitley and the BJP not endorsing his views on Subramanian, Swamy said, “Let him (Jaitley) say what he wants… I have nothing to do with what Jaitley says. I can talk to the party President or the Prime Minister.” “Will talk to them when required, right now it’s not needed as I have said what I had to say,” he insisted.

An unrepentant Swamy added to his Wednesday’s rant against the CEA and said he was willing to “suspend” his attack on Subramanian provided the government still considers him
“patriotic” despite his “anti-India stand”.