Congress ‘bad loser’ on Rafale, says Arun Jaitley

New Delhi: Calling the Congress “bad losers”, finance minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday ruled out referring the Rafale deal to a Joint Parliamentary Comm-ittee and said the Opposition party will prefer disruptions over discussion on the issue in the remainder of the Winter Session. He said that the CAG’s view of the deal was not relevant after the Supreme Court’s “clean chit” on the issue. The Congress wants the Rafale deal to be referred to a JPC, particularly on the price arrived at by the BJP government versus the one negotiated by the previous UPA government.

“After the Supreme Court has spoken the last word, it gets legitimacy. A political body can never come to a finding contrary to what the court has said,” Mr Jaitley wrote in a Facebook blog titled “Rafale: Lies, shortlived lies and now further lies?” Mr Jaitley said that “having failed in their initial falsehood”, the Congress “is now manufacturing further lies about the judgment”.

On the Congress claiming “ambiguity” in the court’s judgment that said the deal had been examined by the CAG and was now before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Mr Jaitley said defence transactions go to the CAG for an audit review, that are then referred to the PAC.

“This was factually and accurately stated by the government before the court. The audit review of Rafale is pending before the CAG. All facts are shared with it. When its report is out, it will go to the PAC. Notwithstanding this factually correct statement made, if an ambiguity has emerged in the court order, the correct course is for anyone to apply/mention before the court and have it corrected,” he said. The correct picture has been presented to the court and it must now be left to the wisdom of the court to state at which stage the CAG review is pending, he added.

“The CAG review is not relevant to the final findings on procedure, pricing and offset suppliers. But bad losers never accept the truth. Having failed in multiple lies they have now started an innuendo about the judgment,” the minister said.

Mr Jaitley said on the facts the Congress lied about, the court’s judgment “conclusively establishes the Opposition party’s vulnerabilities in a discussion on defence transactions”.

“It will be a great opportunity to remind the nation of the legacy of the Congress Party and its defence acquisitions — a great opportunity indeed for some of us to speak,” he wrote.