New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was responsible for delay in the delivery of Rafale fighter jets as he was holding “direct negotiations” in the deal. He also asked why there was no investigation against the PM when the government was talking of probing others for theft of documents.
Launching a sustained attack on the Prime Minister, Mr Gandhi even called him Pakistan’s “poster boy,” pointing, among other things, to the presence of intelligence personnel in a Pakistani team put together to investigate the 2016 attack in Pathankot.
BJP, on its part, asked the Congress president whether he needed a certificate from Pakistan about the fighter aircraft as he neither believed the Indian Air Force (IAF) nor the Supreme Court verdict. It also accused the Congress president of speaking “blatant lies” on the Rafale issue.
Repeating his allegation of a “'30,000 crore scam” in the Rafale deal, Mr Gandhi also accused the government of manipulating institutions to “save” PM Modi and said that justice should be for all.
Referring to the government investigation into the theft of the Rafale documents, Mr Gandhi said that everyone can be investigated but there must be a probe against Mr Modi also as he alleged that the ministry files showed the Prime Minister was holding parallel negotiations in the fighter jet deal.
The Congress president said it is the government’s job and the court’s duty to give justice and his party is just saying “give justice to everybody.”
He even dubbed the Prime Minister as the “poster boy of Pakistan” for publicly hugging former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and inviting the neighbouring country’s spy agency, ISI, to Pathankot after the IAF base was attacked. Mr Gandhi’s remarks came on Tuesday after Mr Modi called the Opposition as the “poster boys of Pakistan” for seeking proof of the IAF’s action on a terror camp in Balakot in Pakistan.
After Mr Gandhi demanded a probe against the Prime Minister in the Rafale deal, the BJP hit back with Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad alleging that the Congress president believed Pakistan more than the Indian forces.
