The protest comes only a day after Reliance owner Anil Ambani made a statement over the same stating Rahul Gandhi as ‘uninformed and unaware’.
Terming the allegations as "baseless, ill-informed and unfortunate," Ambani said, "truth alone will prevail" as the charges are driven by "malicious vested interests and corporate rivals."
Ambani was responding to a question from the media as to why he chose to exclude the Congress president in the Rs 5,000-crore defamation case filed by his company on the Rafale deal.
"I have personally written to Gandhi stating that the Congress has been misinformed, misdirected and misled on the Rafale deal by malicious vested interest and corporate rivals," he told reporters after announcing completion of the sale of RInfra's power business in Mumbai to the Adani group for Rs 18,800-crore.
Ahead of Ambani’s statement; Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in interview to a news agency called Congress President Rahul Ganshi’s allegations on Rafale deal as a “Kindergarten debate”.
What was negotiated from 2015 to 2016 and finally executed in 2016, with the escalations and the currency variations, the basic aircraft price turns out to be 9% cheaper. Is the Congress party aware of this?” he said.
“Quantum in defence is always large. Therefore, quantum doesn’t mean anything. Please produce a shred of evidence that Government of India has anything to do with any of the offset suppliers for any contract, whether under UPA or NDA” FM Jaitley added.
“I have, at least twice, repeated this sentence, how much does he know and when will he know? Can you compare a basic aircraft’s pricing with a loaded aircraft? Can you compare simple aircraft with a weaponized aircraft?” FM stated in response to Gandhi’s allegations.
He further said that it’s a government to government arrangement and one cannot lie in such an arrangement. “Congress must remember that it can’t fool people all the time. This is a government to government arrangement. Offset has nothing to do with this contract. Government will purchase 36 fully-loaded aircrafts from France, no private party involved. Government’s role ends”.