New Delhi: After an allegation was made by a Congress leader that a fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had a meeting in the parliament for a time period of 15 minutes just a day before the accused fugitive flew to the UK, BJP sources claimed that the said meeting could not have happened because Mr. Jaitley was not present in the parliament that day in March 2016.

“I was in the central hall of Parliament House. I saw Jaitley and Mallya standing and talking in the corner. After 5-7 minutes, they sat on the bench and started talking. Mallya had come for the first time just to meet Jaitley,” Congress leader PL Puniya had said earlier this week. “It is my challenge. You can look at CCTV footage and see if I am wrong. If I am wrong, I will resign,” he declared.

Regarding that, the BJP has given a detailed sequence of events of Tuesday, March 1, 2016, taken from Mr. Jaitley’s diary.

The party sources said that on that day, Arun Jaitley attended the parliamentary meeting by the BJP from 9:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m and after that, Mr. Jaitley went to the Parliament House and had held an informal meeting with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the latter’s room.

Mr. Jaitley went directly to the Rajya Sabha after the meeting where he spent about 45 minutes that is from 11 am to 11:45 am. According to the BJP sources, the Finance Minister left the Rajya Sabha exactly at around 11:47 am and from there, he went to Vigyan Bhavan which is just 2 km away to attend a function there.

As a proof, a video of the event on March 1 displays Mr. Jaitley starting his speech at 1:08 pm and ending it at 1:17 pm. Mr. Jaitley was at Vigyan Bhawan to deliver a speech to mark the 40^th Civil Accounts Day.

He was present at the venue until around 2 pm, according to the BJP sources. From there, Mr. Jaitley headed towards his office in North Block and reached there, they said.

During all this time, at no point of time, did Mr. Jaitley visit the central hall of parliament where the meeting is alleged to have taken place with the liquor baron, the sources said.

After the allegation was made, Arun Jaitley had slammed the sensational claim that he had held a “meeting” with the fugitive before he left India in the year 2016. He even said that he had never given him any appointment after becoming a minister in the year 2014. But according to him, Vijay Mallya misused his position as a parliamentarian to accost him to the parliament.

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