Responding to The Hindu ’s expose on the Rafale deal, the Centre and the BJP said both the newspaper and opposition parties are flogging a dead horse. The BJP fielded Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and HRD Minister Prakash Javdekar to defend Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his office, as the Opposition said the report made it clear that the Centre has something to hide.

Sitharaman said in Lok Sabha that the report should have also carried the reply of the then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar. “If the newspaper wanted to bring the truth out, I would have thought that it was incumbent upon that newspaper to put the reply of the then Raksha Mantri also on record,” she said. “The then Raksha Mantri, Parrikar, had very clearly said... in response to the file noting of the then Defence Secretary... ‘remain calm, there is nothing to worry, things are going all right’,” she added.

She said that the PMO’s enquiries about the progress of any work cannot be construed as an interference and added that every question on Rafale is over and done with. “The newspaper and the opposition parties are flogging a dead horse. In other words, they are like what the PM said yesterday (Thursday)... playing into the hands of multi-national corporations and with vested interests keeping the issue alive,” she claimed. “They are not interested in the Indian Air Force getting powerful. They are not interested in the Indian Air Force becoming empowered. They are working to the tunes of multi-national corporate warfare ,” she said.

Javadekar said the “lie-manufacturing factory” of Rahul Gandhi continues to operate and “he has served us yet another lie”. “We absolutely reject his allegations,” Javadekar told reporters. “Rahul Gandhi and the Congress are working to get the Rafale deal scrapped. They are playing into the hands of foreign forces and companies with vested interests,” he added. He reiterated the BJP’s allegation that the UPA government had finalised the Rafale deal in 2011 but did not go ahead with it because it had not got any commission. “There cannot be a deal in a Congress government without any commission,” said Javadekar. “The Supreme Court has said there is no scam in the Rafale deal. Gandhi does not accept it. Repeating a lie would not make it true,” he added.

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