New Delhi: Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday slammed Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for theatrics — “doing drama” — of being insulted.He claimed it was just a ruse to run away without answering his pointed question in the Lok Sabha on whether her ministry objected to Prime Minister Modi deciding in two minutes the Rafale deal negotiated over eight years.
He told reporters after the debate on the Rafale deal that he had sought her answer in a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but instead she ended up by engaging in histrionics and the Speaker closed the debate without a proper response.”Instead of answering the questions, she started doing drama — ‘Oh I was insulted. I was called a liar’.
My simple question was that after such long negotiations by the Air Force chief, Defence Minister, secretaries and Air Force officers, did those, who conducted the negotiations, object when (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi did a bypass surgery to circumvent the negotiated deal,” Rahul said.
He added that his question was based on her admission that the Prime Minister did indeed conduct the “bypass surgery” and issued a new contract to buy 36 fighter aircraft from Dassault, as opposed to 126 such aircraft negotiated in the earlier deal.
“I had asked, when did this bypass surgery happen? Did the Defence Ministry or Air Force officials object to it? It was a simple query but she evaded the question and left without answering,” he said.”The crux of her speech was that the deal was negotiated by Air Force for over eight years and Modi changed that contract in two minutes.”