A day after a war of words in Parliament and a challenge for a one-on-one debate to Narendra Modi, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi continued his onslaught on the Prime Minister over the Rafale Deal through Twitter.
Accusing the PM of fleeing the debate on the controversial deal to acquire the 36 combat jets from France, Gandhi tweeted that Modi is lecturing students at the Lovely University in Punjab on Thursday instead of answering questions on the alleged wrongdoings in the contract signed with Dassault Aviation. The PM is visiting Lovely Professional University (LPU) for the inauguration of five-day Indian Science Congress.
“So it seems our PM has fled Parliament & his own open book Rafale exam & is instead lecturing students at Lovely Univ. in Punjab, today. I request the students there to, respectfully, ask him to please answer the 4 questions posed to him by me, yesterday," he wrote on the social media platform.
So it seems our PM has fled Parliament & his own open book Rafale exam & is instead lecturing students at Lovely Univ. in Punjab, today. I request the students there to, respectfully, ask him to please answer the 4 questions posed to him by me, yesterday. #RafaleScam— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) January 3, 2019
The Congress chief had on Wednesday posted four questions for the PM to answer on Thursday after he skipped the Parliament debate on the Rafale deal on Wednesday.
He said he was giving the questions a day in advance so that the PM could prepare the answers and dubbed it “an open book exam", in an apparent dig at Modi for his interview to news agency ANI on January that Gandhi had called staged in Lok Sabha on Wednesday as it did not feature a single question on the Rafale deal.
Gandhi has repeatedly challenged PM Modi to answer four questions on the deal that involved the number of aircraft, pricing, claims about defence ministry objections and what the party called patronage.
He had initially tweeted three questions on Wednesday evening – but numbered them Q1, 2 and Q4, skipping number three, perhaps to pique the curiosity of his followers.
Tomorrow, the PM faces an Open Book #RafaleDeal Exam in Parliament. Here are the exam questions in advance:Q1. Why 36 aircraft, instead of the 126 the IAF needed?Q2. Why 1,600 Cr instead of 560 Cr per aircraft. Q4. Why AA instead of HAL?Will he show up? Or send a proxy?— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) January 2, 2019
People on Twitter noticed the anomaly and called him out on it, after which he gave out the third question later in the day.
So it seems our PM has fled Parliament & his own open book Rafale exam & is instead lecturing students at Lovely Univ. in Punjab, today. I request the students there to, respectfully, ask him to please answer the 4 questions posed to him by me, yesterday. #RafaleScam— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) January 3, 2019
Gandhi was on Wednesday stopped from playing the ‘Parrikar tape’ in Lok Sabha by Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and his microphone was turned off twice when he tried to read the transcript as it was unauthenticated.
The Congress had released the tape outside Parliament on which Goa minister Vishwajit Rane could purportedly be heard telling an unidentified person that “Parrikar is has all the Rafale files in his bedroom and is holding the government to ransom".
Both Parrikar and Rane have denied the contents of the tape. Union minister Arun Jaitley also called it fake as he rebutted Gandhi’s arguments in Lok Sabha on Wednesday and said he had a “legacy of lying".
The Congress contends that the government had finalised an overpriced deal to benefit Anil Ambani, whose firm Reliance Defence, despite lacking experience, was recommended as an offset partner for Dassault, the company manufacturing the Rafale aircraft. Both Dassault and the government have denied the Congress allegations.
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