Rahul attacks govt in LS, raises Rafale deal

New Delhi: Congress President Rahul Gandhi today launched a frontal attack on the NDA government in Lok Sabha over unfulfilled promises and questioned the Rafale deal demanding answers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on why he allegedly favoured a particular businessman in the contract. Participating in the debate on the ‘No Confidence Motion’ against the government, Gandhi also accused Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman of speaking “untruth” in the deal.

“The Defence Minister has spoken ‘untruth’….The French prime minister has personally told me that there is no secret pact between the Indian and the French governments,” he said demanding that the Prime Minister must answer why this contract was given to a particular businessman after taking it away from the Hindustan Aeronautical Ltd.

“Everybody understands the relationship the prime minister has with certain people. Everybody understands the amount of money that goes into the marketing of the prime minister and everybody knows who have funded that. One of those people was given the Rafale contract.. The gentleman benefitted to the tune of Rs 45,000 crore,” he alleged.

Rising in support of the motion, he said the TDP like many others was “a victim of BJP’s political weapon called ‘jumla (gimmick) strike’.” The TDP had moved the motion against the NDA government. “You are a victim of the 21st century political weapon.

The political weapon is the ‘Jumla strike’. There are many many more victims like you,” he said, adding that the farmers, the youth, the Dalits, tribals and women are also the victims of this weapon of the government.

The Congress chief referred to the amount of Rs 15 lakh that was promised to every Indian by the BJP before coming to power after bringing in all black money stashed abroad, and termed it as “Jumla strike number one’.

Raising the issue of joblessness which he termed as ‘jumla strike 2’, Gandhi said against the promise of providing two crore jobs every year, only 4 lakh jobs have been created. He also alleged that unemployment was at its peak in last four years under Modi.

He said loans of corporates worth over Rs 2.5 lakh crore were waived by the Modi government, which did not agree to loan waivers for farmers. He also raised the issue of prime minister’s foreign tours and accused him of not raising the Doikalam issue during his ‘without-agenda’ China visit.

When some members of the treasury benches tried to intervene and accuse him of speaking “unsubstantiated facts”, he retorted saying “daro mat, daro mat…sach se daro mat” (Don’t be afraid of the truth).