New Delhi, July 8: Jayant Sinha said something that seriously jeopardised the reasonably even relations between the BJP and the Telugu Desam Party in Parliament's last budget session.

As junior finance minister then, Jayant said in a written reply to Desam MP Muttamsetti Srinivasa Rao there was no provision to grant special category status to Andhra Pradesh, a matter close to Chandrababu Naidu and his party.

Jayant's blunt answer was the 14th Finance Commission had not proposed any change in criteria to grant Andhra special category status and that special assistance would be based on the Niti Ayog's recommendations and, more critically, "on the availability of resources with the Union government within gross budgetary support".

The Desam was up in arms. Its MP, Galla Jaydev, said "people in Andhra feel cheated" and threw down the gauntlet to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "If the statement of the PM in Parliament (assuring Andhra of a special status) cannot be honoured, there is no value to his statement."

The BJP's national secretary in charge of Andhra, Sidharth Nath Singh, swung into damage control mode. At a news conference in Hyderabad, he said Jayant would visit the Andhra capital in June and give "clarifications" on the promises made and fulfilled and those provisions of the State Reorganisation Act that were already implemented.

However, the Andhra BJP as well as sections of the national BJP were "furious" with Jayant for "saying something without thinking through the issue and nuancing his words".

BJP sources said "such indiscretions" were not expected from Jayant, who had arrived in the party as the son of former finance and foreign minister, Yashwant Sinha and held degrees from IIT Delhi, University of Pennsylvania and the Harvard Business School.

Despite Yashwant's open declaration of war against the Modi regime for pensioning him off with other 75-plus seniors, Jayant was inducted in the government as a junior finance minister in November 2014. Modi refused to allow Yashwant's running criticism to cloud an independent assessment of his son.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley even said he was "impressed" with Jayant's speeches in Parliament and indicated he was heading for a role in the government.

Jaitley gave him considerable leeway in handling several aspects of banking and revenue, such as cleaning up state-run banks saddled with bad debt and setting up the National Infrastructure Investment Fund with the unstated proviso that disinvestment matters were outside his purview.

Unlike junior ministers who, willingly or unwillingly, live in the shadow of their seniors, Jaitley allowed Jayant to emerge as a person in his own right. He held forth at length on economic issues even after the budget presentation when traditionally post-budget rituals that include giving interviews belong to the finance minister.

Jayant sometimes spoke at variance with the official version.

After a conference of tax administrators addressed by Modi in June, Jayant quoted the Prime Minister as saying taxmen had been asked to double the taxpayer base of the country. The following day, revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia denied such a target had been fixed. The finance ministry issued a clarification.

Jayant added to the confusion that prevailed a day after the budget was unveiled this year, emanating from different interpretations given to the proposal to tax 60 per cent of Employees' Provident Fund savings at retirement. The plan was dumped.

But Modi, who has to live with enough motor mouths in his system, might have pardoned the talking out of turn.

A potential source of embarrassment for Modi and Jaitley might have arisen from the role of Jayant's wife, Punita Kumar-Sinha, the founder and managing partner of an investment advisory firm, Pacific Paradigm Advisors, and an independent director on corporate boards.

Remember the "Mauritius route" in Atal Bihari Vajpayee's time?

Punita got linked to the then government's decision to "let off" Mauritius-based foreign institutional investors over the double taxation issue.

Investment firms, based in the US, had opened branches in Mauritius for the purpose of tax residency and routed their investments into India through the island country to avoid paying double taxes.

Punita was then an investment manager with India Fund Inc, which was headquartered in the US and operated in India through the "Mauritius route".

After the blow-up, intensified by the Opposition and Subramanian Swamy baying for Yashwant's head, Vajpayee moved him to external affairs.

Punita, a financial markets' veteran, was an independent director on the board of firms such as JSW Steel, Srei Infrastructure Finance and Rallis India before the Modi government came in.

"That's not our concern," a BJP source stated.

What caused the party "concern" was Punita took up similar positions in several firms since then, even after Jayant became a minister. These included realty firm Sobha Limited, Bharat Financial Inclusion Limited, Fairfax India Holdings Corporation and as recent as January 2016, Infosys Limited.

Her appointment at Infosys was commented upon on Twitter.

What also disconcerted the government was a tea party Jayant had hosted in his home recently to which he had invited bank chiefs and finance ministry officials. Punita was present at the do.

The BJP and the government also took note of Jayant's presence at an event hosted by L.K. Advani to celebrate his 51st marriage anniversary in February this year.

Advani, consigned to the BJP's margdarshak mandal with his peer Murli Manohar Joshi, had invited Joshi, Yashwant, Shanta Kumar and Arun Shourie, who collectively make up an "anti-Modi" cabal that turns on the heat against the government and the Prime Minister periodically.

Unusually, Jayant, who for optics has maintained a distance from his father, accompanied him and spent time at Advani's residence.

Jayant was not available for a response on his cell phone and his office and residential land lines despite repeated attempts. A text message went unanswered too.