All India Congress Committee (AICC) spokesperson Dasoju Sravan alleged that the Narender Modi government was functioning for Ambanis and Adanis and not the Aam Aadmi unlike the claims of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Addressing a press conference here, Mr. Sravan accused Prime Minister of hiding to evade a reply on Rafale scam in Parliament. He said the Prime Minister needs to answer as to why his government purchased Rafale aircrafts at escalated prices of Rs. 1650 crore each instead of Rs. 526 crore which was finalised during the previous UPA regime. He said that the government owed an explanation on why the contract was taken away from the defence PSU HAL and given to a private entity.
Mr. Sravan also ridiculed Mr. Modi’s statement given in an interview to a news channel that he was not aware of the Federal Front which Telangana Chief Minister and TRS chief K. Chandrashekhar Rao was planning to constitute. By feigning total ignorance Mr. Modi was trying to mislead the people whereas the Federal Front was being promoted at his instance to split anti-BJP parties and votes.
He said Modi and Amit Shah have entered into a secret deal with TRS and even killed the interest of their own party in Telangana just to prevent Congress from coming to power.
TPCC treasurer Gudur Narayana Reddy, in a statement here said that the use of unparliamentary language and personal attacks are the favourite tools of BJP leaders when they fail to defend the allegations of corruption. “Rafale is not only a scam of thousands of crores, but it is deal engineered by Prime Minister Narender Modi to compromise on national security,” he said.
Condemning Mr. Jaitley for calling Mr. Rahul Gandhi a liar, Mr. Reddy said that the Finance Minister needs to do a serious introspection before making such comments on the Congress president. Mr. Jaitely needs to answer the questions raised by Mr. Rahul Gandhi on why the aircrafts worth ₹ 526 crore each were purchased for over ₹ 1600 crore and why Mr. Modi changed the contract to reduce the number of aircrafts to be purchased from 126 to 36.
“Instead of answering the questions, Mr. Modi has forced Mr. Jaitely to carry out personal attack on Mr. Rahul Gandhi to divert the attention,” he said and demanded that a probe through Joint Parliamentary Committee be ordered.
The Congress leader also demanded that Jaitley withdraw his remarks against Mr. Rahul Gandhi and also tender an unconditional apology to the nation for resorting to ‘falsehood’ while speaking in Parliament.
