Rahul Gandhi ‘congenital liar’, says Smriti Irani on Manohar Parrikar remarks

NEW DELHI: BJP on Thursday continued to attack Congress president Rahul Gandhi for claiming that Goa chief minister Manohar Parikkar had admitted that he had no clue about the Rafale deal.

In a blog, Union minister Smriti Irani termed Gandhi a “congenital liar” while party MP and spokesperson Anil Baluni expressed anguish saying the Congress president has stooped to a new low in Indian politics by trying to take political mileage out of his visits to leaders suffering from fatal diseases.

“Deep concerns led him to a courtesy visit to Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar’s residence. He (Rahul Gandhi) concocted a conversation where he alleged that Manohar Parrikar distanced himself from Rafale. Speaking in the motion of no confidence against the government, he concocted a conversation between him and President Macron of France which the French government promptly denied,” Irani wrote in her blog.

She said the Congress president had earlier interpreted an exchange of pleasantries between him and Sushma Swaraj as a conversation with a political slant. “He had similarly, in the past, concocted a conversation with Arun Jaitley claiming that the minister had told him that he knew very little about Jammu and Kashmir. Is he India’s first post-truth politician? From an imaginary Rafale, to a loan waiver scam, he is now into hallucinating conversations,” she said.

Baluni said the Congress president’s recent behaviour has been unbecoming the president of a national party as he has not showed bare minimum humanity and sensitivity to keep leaders with serious illness away from his trademark political diatribe based on lies.

“Even after doctors gave no permission, Rahul Gandhi visited former prime minister Atal Bihari Bajpayee when he was hospitalised at AIIMS. It is ironic that later Congress president claimed that no BJP leader had visited Atalji and he was the first to do so,” Baluni said.

Taking swipe at Gandhi, Irani said “What does one make out of this? Does he have a mindset of a collegelevel election contestant or is he a congenital liar?” She said said those who depend on dynasties for their survival find themselves looking the other way even when the above “aberrations” may well be psychiatric in character.

“Ordinarily such psychiatric aberrations as hallucinating conversations would rule a person unfit for public life. Persons suffering from them need help and not political rewards,” she said.