Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman
Lashing out the Congress party over the Rafale deal, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the party was 'knowingly' misleading people over the pricing details of the jets.
"The Congress is knowingly misleading people on the pricing of the Rafale jets," Sitharaman said at the BJP office in Mumbai.
Hitting out at the Gandhi family for alleging corruption in the defence contract, she said that they showed "amazing audacity" by not listening to the Supreme Court's verdict in the case.
The stance of the country's "first family" in not listening to the apex court's order on the Rafale deal case petition can be termed as, with due respect, "amazing audacity", she said.
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BJP is holding 70 press conferences on Monday to target Congress over the Rafale deal. Besides Sitharaman, the party has deployed Yogi Adityanath, Devendra Fadnavis, Vijay Rupani, Sarbananda Sonowal, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Prakash Javdekar, J P Nadda, Smriti Irani, Suresh Prabhu, former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and party's organisational leaders will also speak to the media on Monday at different places.
The Congress has repeatedly criticised the deal for the 36 Rafale jets, alleging that the government was procuring each aircraft at a cost of over Rs 1,670 crore as against Rs 526 crore finalised by the UPA government.
The government has, however, denied any irregularity in the deal.
Earlier on Friday, the Supreme Court dismissed a batch of petitions seeking probe into the Rafale deal, handing a major victory to BJP-led Central government. The court said there is no occasion to doubt the decision-making process in the multi-billion dollar Rafale fighter jet deal with France.
Congress leaders vehemently opposed the judgment and demanded a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe the matter. Earlier on Sunday, the Congress urged the apex court to recall its Rafale judgment and issue notices to the central government for contempt of court and perjury, alleging the Centre had provided false information to the apex court. Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma alleged that the government was guilty of committing a breach of privilege of both houses of Parliament by claiming that the CAG report on Rafale aircraft pricing had been presented to the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament.
Meanwhile, ruling out referring the Rafale deal to a parliamentary panel, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley Sunday launched a blistering attack on the Congress, calling it "bad losers" and said the CAG's view of the deal is not relevant after the Supreme Court's clean chit.
