Rafale row: Rahul Gandhi is a 'serial liar,' Congress is an issue-less party: Modi govt
Amid the fresh twist in the ongoing Rafale controversy, the Narendra Modi government on Friday hit back at the Congress and called it an ‘issue-less’ party.
‘Rahul Gandhi is a serial liar,’ Union Minister Piyush Goyal said while addressing the media in New Delhi on Friday.
The minister’s stinging point-by-point rebuttal comes a day after the Congress chief held a press conference, where he spoke about latest twist of ‘trade off’ in Rafale deal and called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a ‘corrupt man.’
‘We have a crystal clear situation, where, for keeping national interests and security of the nation as paramount, the government decided to expedite the procurement of very crucial defence equipment,’ Goyal said.
‘Repeating lie after lie, falsehood over falsehood is not going to help to change the reality. Congress party is an issue-less party and their leadership cannot understand the basic facts and possibly trying to hide their own wrongdoing,’ Goyal added.
Regarding the latest reports about the ‘obligation’ of making Reliance Defence as the offset partner, Goyal said that, ‘the CEO of Dassault Aviation has categorically confirmed that since the implementation of offsets was an obligation, they themselves chose the partners to implement the offsets.’
He also said that even the Supreme Court has ‘categorically refused to discuss the price and technical details of Rafale which are sensitive for the security of country.’
From ‘twisting the French media report’ to ‘lying about ex-French President calling our PM a thief’, Rahul Gandhi has been consistently lying about Rafale ‘facts’, Goyal said.
All this comes after former French President Francois Hollande last month said that France had "no choice" but to join with Reliance after it was pushed by the Indian government -- comments which were seized upon by Indian opposition parties.
Under Indian defence procurement rules, foreign companies winning contracts must "offset" or reinvest half the total value -- in this case around eight billion euros -- in joint ventures or purchases with Indian firms.
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