'Deal Mein Kuch Kala Hai': Rahul Gandhi Accuses Jaitley of Lying, Shows UPA’s Replies on Cost of Defence Deals

New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday launched an attack on Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in context of the controversy around the Rafale fighter jet deal with France.

Gandhi took to Twitter, spelling Jaitley as 'Jaitlie' to indicate he spoke untruths. This is the second time he has referred to Jaitley like this and is already facing a privilege motion for the wordplay.

In the tweet, he attacked Jaitley for saying the UPA never released prices of defence purchases.

"To nail your lie, here are 3 Parliamentary replies by the UPA with full transparency on pricing," he said on Twitter, while attaching a copy of a written replies from 2010 by the then UPA government in Parliament on the cost of purchase of the aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya.

Defending the government's decision against making the break-up of the nearly Rs 58,000 crore Rafale deal public, Jaitley had on Wednesday said when UPA was in power, then defence ministers Pranab Mukherjee and AK Antony had on 15 occasions told Parliament that giving out such details would be against the interest of national security.

He had said the Congress president should go to Mukherjee and "get lessons on national security."

In an earlier tweet in December last year, Gandhi had addressed the finance minister the same way. On this, BJP MP Bhupender Yadav moved a privilege motion against him.

Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu has sent it to the Lok Sabha speaker for further action, noting that there seemed to be a prima facie case of privilege against Gandhi.

Yadav, in his complaint, had alleged that there is a "breach of privilege" by Gandhi as he used derogatory words against the finance minister and leader of the House.

"Dear Mr Jaitlie - thank you for reminding India that our PM never means what he says or says what he means. #BJPLies," Gandhi had tweeted on December 27.

The Congress president had also raised Rafale issue on Twitter on Tuesday, questioned why the Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had changed her stance from being ready to reveal the pricing of the deal in December 2017 to calling it a state secret on February 2018.

Meanwhile, the BJP has accused Gandhi of adopting "big lie technique" in his attack on the government over the Rafale fighter jet deal but said he would not succeed in his "crude" attempts to create doubts in people's mind.

BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao said Gandhi was drawing a leaf from Hitler's propaganda driven by the "big lie technique" that a lie repeated a thousands times would be taken as truth with time.

The inter-governmental Rafale deal was bound by a "non-disclosure" clause signed by the UPA government, he said, adding that Gandhi was "dishing out lies" in the hope that some muck would stick.