New Delhi: Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday night dismissed as “fabricated” the allegations by former BJP ministers Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha that the Modi government’s deal to buy Rafale jets from France was the “biggest defence scandal” in the country.
“All allegations being levelled in various press conferences are already answered on the floor of the Parliament. A recent attempt, in the House, to malign the government through baseless charges collapsed. Today’s was yet another attempt at repeating fabricated facts,” Sitharaman said in a late night tweet.
The tweet came in response to Sinha and Shourie’s allegation that the Rafale jet deal was “unilaterally” finalized by Prime Minister Narendra Modi by violating mandatory procedures, and the scandal was “larger than any thus far”.
Also in his blog post on the facebook, Union Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday dubbed as “falsehood” and “fabricated facts” former BJP Ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie’s claims on the Rafale deal and said that “reprocessed lies were being made by forces desperate to prove their relevance”.
Jaitley said that it was reprehensible that a fresh attempt to tarnish the Modi government’s image had been made less than two weeks after the miserable failure of a similar effort in Parliament.
“I have seen another attempt today at maligning the government by spreading falsehood and peddling fabricated facts regarding the 2016 Inter-Governmental Agreement (with France) for Rafale fighter aircraft,” the Minister said.
“There is not a grain of truth in the wild allegations repeated today nor anything substantiating in the purported facts and voluminous documents marshalled to corroborate the baseless accusations. The unsubstantiated allegations against the government constitute nothing but reprocessed lies by forces increasingly desperate to prove their relevance,” he added.
Jaitley, a senior BJP leader, said that the government had already responded effectively to each and “every distortion and misinformation” on the issue.
He said that those raising alarm on alleged danger to national security ought to realise their responsibility and “refrain from politicising for narrow individual ends those very matters pertaining to national defence that were consistently ignored by them and by those with whom they sympathise”.
Sinha and Shourie earlier in the day alleged that the jet deal was “unilaterally” finalised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi by violating mandatory procedures, and this “defence scandal was larger than any thus far”.
They sought a time-bound probe by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India and asked the government to come clean on the issue.