Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Monday cited a letter from Congress leader K.V. Thomas, urging him to save the distressed infrastructure lending major IL&FS through investments, to slam Rahul Gandhi and accuse the Opposition party of trying to sabotage the country’s economy.

“The Congress is a national saboteur. It wants to sabotage India’s economy by allowing a situation in relation to a company to persist, expand and become unmanageable. It lacks statesmanship and vision,” Jaitley wrote in a blog post, attaching the letter the MP from Kerala had written.

The blog comes at a time the Congress has demanded a probe into Narendra Modi’s alleged role in “gifting” the GIFT City project as Gujarat chief minister to Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd, whose debt defaults have triggered panic in the stock market.

According to the letter released by Jaitley, Thomas, a former Union minister, has urged the finance minister to save IL&FS, stressing that the collapse of the company would have a “huge impact on the economy”.

In the letter dated September 20, Thomas urges Jaitley to “guide Indian institutional investors like LIC, SBI, HDFC to support IL&FS to provide equity & debt of Rs 8000 crores requested by the company”.

“In fact, it is the section of the Congress leadership which has been urging me to enable investments in the IL&FS and save the company. A senior congress leader, Prof. K.V. Thomas, who is a former Union Minister and has been the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, has written to me on 20th September, 2018 making such a request. I am enclosing his letter. It demolishes every word that Rahul Gandhi and his coterie has been spreading,” Jaitley wrote in his blog.

The finance minister lashed out at what he called the “Rahul Gandhi school of thinking” for labelling the government’s move to save IL&FS a scam.

Jaitley pointed out that IL&FS had been promoted in 1987 with the Central Bank of India having shares of 50.5 per cent and the UTI 30.5 per cent, adding that in 2005 and 2006 (when the Congress was in power) the state-run insurance company LIC had acquired 15 per cent and 11.10 per cent stake, respectively.

“Do I start calling all these investments today ‘a scam’ as per ‘the perverted Rahul Gandhi school of thinking?’ From where has he invented a proposal of Rs. 91,000 crores investment likely to take place by LIC and SBI in the IL&FS?” he asked.

Jaitley claimed the “days of crony capitalism are over” under the NDA government as it deals with challenges “objectively and professionally”.