"The footprints he left behind as a finance minister during this period will be remembered for a long time," he said.
When the reform process was blocked on account of decisions of the National Advisory Council or when Rahul Gandhi tore apart the papers of objectionable ordinance, the Prime Minister was perceived as a non-leader who had to accept everything without his opinion mattering significantly, he said.
"It was his inability to overrule people which affected his functioning. He did not have the last word. Had he overruled his Finance Minister on the retrospective tax law knowing fully well the consequences of a retrospective taxation, the Prime Minister would have stood out.
"If he had stood up and cancelled the coal blocks allocation once the fraud was revealed or cancelled the 2G licences himself rather than wait for the court to do it, I have no doubt that history would have recorded him very differently. It was the inability to speak up within his own party that may compel the historians to take a different view of the man," said Jaitley.
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