Rafale, Congress's top 2019 Lok Sabha poll plank, gets only one mention in 2024 document

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, April 5

Alleged corrpution in the Rafale fighter jet deal – the Congress’s principal plank in the 2019 Lok Sabha election — stood reduced to a single mention in the party’s 48-page 2024 manifesto released on Friday.

The then Congress chief Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Chowkidar chor hai’ attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the purchase of the Rafale jets from France had failed to pay electoral dividends in 2019.

In an introspection meeting of the Congress Working Committee following the party’s loss, many Congress leaders had pointed to the party’s Rafale-centred personalised campaign against Modi as having boomeranged.

The Congress’s 2024 manifesto steers clear of any elaborate references to the fighter aircraft deal and says in a special “Anti-Corruption” segment of the document, “In the last 10 years, we have seen that several measures taken by the BJP/NDA government were actually a cloak for corruption. Some examples are demonetisation, the Rafale deal, Pegasus spyware, and the Electoral Bonds scheme. The Congress will probe these dubious deals and schemes and bring to law those who made illegal gains through these measures.”

The Congress, however, has drafted its own anti-corruption plan to counter PM Modi’s persistent attacks on the opposition INDIA bloc leaders over alleged graft.

The manifesto says the party, if elected, will probe all accused defectors from the party who have been allowed to go scotfree by the BJP.

“The BJP has turned out to be a giant washing machine. The accused in registered cases who joined the BJP were allowed to escape the law. The allegations against such persons will be revived and investigated,” the manifesto says, also incorporating promises to

carry out “complete investigation of the electoral bonds scam, reckless sale of public assets, PM CARES scam, repeated intelligence failures at the highest level and corruption in major defence deals”.

The party came down heavily on the ruling BJP-led NDA coalition for allowing “known offenders to leave the country”.

“The circumstances under which these offenders were allowed to leave the country will be probed and all scamsters and their accomplices brought before the law,” the Congress document said.