Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday attacked the Congress in the Rajya Sabha regarding the Ishrat Jahan encounter case. Jaitley said the party compromised national security when it was in power to "fix a political leader", alluding to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was the chief minister of Gujarat when Jahan and three other Lashkar-e-Taiba militants were killed by the state police in 2004.

Jaitley said that the United Progressive Alliance government not only changed the affidavit filed in the Gujarat High Court, but also the composition of the Special Investigation Team probing the case on a couple of occasions. He said that "some day, an investigation will take place on how internal security was played with". Jaitley had earlier said the second affidavit filed in the case was fraudulent.

During his 45-minute speech, the finance minister also reached out to opposition parties, asking them to shed "disruptive politics" and cooperate with the Centre to pass key bills in Parliament. He also countered Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi's criticism of the Centre concerning the Jawaharlal Nehru University row. Without directly referring to the sedition-accused student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, Jaitley said the government has nothing against a "particular student". He added that free speech cannot be allowed to be used to advocate dividing the country.