The BJP has tweeted a series of counter-attacks over Rahul Gandhi’s pointed jibes on the controversial Rafale fighter jet deal, accusing the Congress president of “peddling lies”.

Ahead of the Lok Sabha election in summer this year, Rahul Gandhi has stepped up his line of questioning of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government over the Rs 59,000-crore Rafale deal.

And, a new report has added fresh ammunition to Gandhi’s attacks. The report had said that the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had conducted parallel talks with the French government over the Rafale jet fighter deal and had prompted the ministry of defence to protest that the PMO was undermining India’s negotiating position.

Gandhi has reiterated his demand for a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe of the Rafale deal after the report published in The Hindu. The Bharatiya Janata Party, on its part, tweeted a 10-point lie versus fact rejoinder to defend the Rafale deal on Saturday.

“While you are starting a new day of honesty and hard work, #LiarRahulGandhi is preparing to peddle more lies. It’s difficult to track all his lies, but we’ve tried to track major lies peddled by him on #Rafale. A heads up before his today’s quota!” the BJP tweeted from its official handle.

“Lie No.1: #LiarRahul tried to twist some report in a French media house to say making Reliance an offsets partner was a tradeoff for Dassault to get the deal with India. Fact: Both Supreme Court & Dassault CEO said Indian govt had nothing to do with choosing of offsets partners,” it tweeted.

“Lie No.2: #LiarRahul tried to create false impression that SC has found grave irregularities with the deal. Indulged in third grade level propaganda on a sub judice matter,” it went to say.

The ruling party tweeted memes, photographs of documents and videos to point out, what it said, holes in Rahul Gandhi’s attacks over the Rafale deal, which was signed between India and France in 2016 for the purchase of 36 fighter jets.

It also attacked The Hindu over its report that claimed “the French side took advantage of parallel parleys by the PMO that weakened Indian team’s position” in negotiating the Rafale deal with France as it cited a November 24, 2015 note of the defence ministry.

“If #LiarRahul and his partner in crime, The Hindu, really had faith in their ‘discovery’ they should’ve ideally wanted to approach Hon’ble SC with these ‘discoveries’. But they know they won’t stand a chance. Even now, we challenge liar to approach SC with his new ‘evidence’,” the BJP tweeted.

“We have tried to document most of Rahul Gandhi’s #RafaleLies. But given his superhuman capabilities of lying, we realized it’s humanly impossible to document it all. We hence invite you to tweet with #LiarRahul and further this cause of exposing the pathological liar!” ruling party signed off by tweeting.

First Published: Feb 09, 2019 11:11 IST