Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that Congress president Rahul Gandhi is repeating a false narrative on the Rafale deal a dozen times and is trying to convince himself and others that falsehood is the truth. “You can comfortably live in self-delusion,” wrote Jaitley, in his blog.

On Rahul Gandhi’s argument that a private business house in India has got an advantage ranging from ₹38,000 crore to ₹1,30,000 crore from the deal, Jaitley said that Rafale aircrafts and its weaponry is not being manufactured in India at all, neither by Dassault nor by any other private company.

“All 36 aircrafts and their weapons in a fully flyable and usable form will arrive in India. After the supplies begin, Dassault has to make purchases in India for 50 per cent of the contract value. This is as per the UPA’s policy to promote ‘make in India’. If the total deal is for ₹58,000 crore, then 50 per cent of that amounts to ₹29,000 crore. These supplies to Dassault are to be made by over 120 offset suppliers and which business house named, is one of them. Dassault said that only 3 per cent of offset may come to that business house which is less than ₹1000 crore,” he said in the blog.

The Congress, however, countered Jaitley’s arguments. Citing two documents from Dassault, as reported by a TV channel, the party said that statements of former HAL chief TS Raju and Rahul Gandhi are relevant after the release of the fresh documents.

“Not withstanding the contract with HAL and Dassault, the offset was taken away from HAL and handed over to the Reliance Defence,” said Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari. “The documents corroborate the facts time and again. The decision to buy aircrafts without scrapping the tender was after an implicit understanding that the offset contract would go to a particular company suggested by the Indian government,” he claimed.

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