Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley said on Tuesday that the controversy over the date of birth of the Army Chief ought to have been sorted out behind closed doors through “statecraft” before the matter could reach the Supreme Court. “Statecraft was needed and the government allowed the controversy to precipitate. Statecraft should have been used and this situation would not have come up,” Jaitley, who was law minister in the NDA government, told a select gathering in Mumbai at the Express Adda, a conversation hosted by the Express Group.