The fun has just begun, says Rahul Gandhi on Rafale row

Amethi, September 25

Adding to the controversy surrounding the Rafale deal, Congress president Rahul Gandhi said the "fun has just begun" and in coming months his party will expose how every initiative under the Narendra Modi government is an act of theft.

Continuing his tirade against the government over the fighter-jet deal, Gandhi stated that Prime Minister Modi has aided corruption by favouring Anil Ambani in the deal.

"Ye jo bhrashtachaar ke khilaf ladne aaya tha, isi ne Anil Ambani ko 30,000 crore rupaye pakda diye. Abhi toh shuruwat hui hai, abhi dekhna, maza aayega, aane wale 2-3 mahine mein aisa maza dikhayenge hum aapko. Narendra Modi ke jo kaam hain- Rafale, Lalit Modi, Vijay Mallya, notebandhi, Gabar Singh Tax, in sab mein chori hai: Ek -ek kar hum dikha denge ki yeh jo Narendra Modi chowkidaar nahi hain, Narendra Modi ji chorr hain," Rahul Gandhi said.

(The man (Prime Minister Modi), who came to remove corruption, has himself given Rs 30,000 crore to Anil Ambani. The fun has just begun, things are set to turn more interesting. In the next 2-3 months you will have fun after we will show you Narendra Modi's work - Rafale, Vijay Mallya, Lalit Modi, Demonetisation, Gabbar Singh Tax. All of it is theft. One by one, we will show that Narendra Modi ji is not a gatekeeper, but a burglar)

The Congress President made these comments while addressing social media workers of the Congress in Amethi last night. The interaction was held at the Forest Department guest house in Amethi and was closed to the media. However, video of Rahul Gandhi's jibe at Narendra Modi was recorded by some attendees and was shared with local reporters.

In a cryptic tweet dated August 30, Rahul Gandhi warned of "some big bunker buster bombs in the next couple of weeks" with regard to the fighter-jet deal. Days later, former French president François Hollande, in an interview to a French media house, claimed that the French government had no other option but to choose Reliance Defence as an Offset partner for Dassault Aviation.

However, Hollande later backtracked in another interview and said only Dassault Aviation can comment on why Reliance Defence was chosen as the Offset partner.

The BJP on Monday claimed that the Congress scrapped the Rafale deal with France as United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra's company was not made a part of the deal.

The controversial deal was signed by the NDA government with the French government in 2016 after scrapping negotiations made by the UPA government earlier.

The UPA's original plan was to buy 18 off-the-shelf jets from France's Dassault Aviation, with 108 others being assembled in India by the state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) in Bengaluru. (ANI)