Congress insists on JPC probe into Rafale deal

The Congress refused to bury the political row over the Rafale deal, with party leader Mallikarjun Kharge, who is the chairman of the Public Advisory Committee, alleging that since the Modi government lied to the Supreme Court on oath, he will ask the Attorney General and the Comptroller and Auditor General to appear before the PAC.

"Since no such report has been presented to the PAC, as the government has told the Supreme Court, therefore, I am going to request members of all the Public Accounts Committee that the Attorney General, as well as the CAG Chief, be summoned so that we can ask them when the CAG report on Rafale deal was tabled in the Parliament," Kharge said.

"When you feed wrong information in SC and get a clean chit on that then it is not right. We respect the SC but it is not a probe agency, only the JPC (Joint Parliamentary Committee can investigate the Rafale deal. The government has not followed the proper procedure in court," Kharge added.

The Congress continued with the political rhetoric, especially since the government submitted to the apex court that there was a misunderstanding in the language and that while the government said that a CAG report will be filed, the SC misunderstood it to mean that it was already done. The government's admission gave ammunition to the Congress's attack, with senior leaders holding press conferences everywhere.

"The BJP claims Rafale case is fiction, but the SC has not given a clean chit. It has said it is not the forum for discussion for that," said senior Congressman Kapil Sibal.