Congress plans to bring a privilege motion against defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Lok Sabha for misleading the house over Rafale deal. Though the party seemed uncertain about taking any such step against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. According to Congress, the defence minister has misled the Lok Sabha by asserting that the cost of the jets cannot be made public while there is nothing that restricts the government from revealing the value of the fighter plane. Initially Nirmala Sitharaman had assured to give the details on the value of the jets but later she declined from the same. Rahul Gandhi in his tweet has termed it to be a ‘Big-secret’.
On Friday during the ‘no-confidence-voting’ Mr Gandhi had said in his speech that the Prime Minister is unwilling to look into my eyes when he is asked about the Rafale deal. Later the Congress president said that he finds the whole deal suspicious. He had claimed that the president of France had told him that there is nothing in the deal that bounds the government from revealing the details on cost of the Rafale jets.
Our Defence Minister said she would, but now she won’t.
She flip flops between “it’s-not-a-secret” & “it’s-a-BIG-secret”.
The PM squirms when asked about the price of RAFALE and refuses to look me in the eye.
Sure smells like a scam. #RAFALEscam
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) July 22, 2018
Suspecting the Rafale deal worth Rs 58,000 crore with France to be dubious, Rahul Gandhi had been asking the details which was refused by the government mentioning the secrecy agreement. Later in the response to Mr Gandhi’s allegation, defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman had rejected the charges saying that the agreement with the secret pact was signed during the UPA government itself during 2008.
