In the latest development, as reported by the Republic TV, Prime Minister Modi has stepped up the heat and taken the Congress and other opposition parties head-on by agreeing to debate on Rafale deal during the winter session of Parliament which starts from today. This comes after Congress leader, Ghulam Nabi Azad, asked the Prime Minister for a debate on the deal and also demanded an inquiry into the Rafale deal to be made by the Joint Parliamentary Committee, during an all-party meeting chaired by the Prime Minister.
The Congress must have believed that the government will run away from a debate on the issue and that will give the Congress an opportunity to corner the government. However, to the utter dismay of the opposition parties, Prime Minister Modi has turned the tables on the opposition by agreeing to a debate on the Rafale deal. A debate on this issue in the Parliament will in all probability turn out to be a self-harming exercise for the opposition. The incumbent government has nothing to hide on this issue and there has been no wrongdoing or unfairness in this deal. By bringing this issue in the Parliament, the Congress and the other opposition parties will only expose their lies and false propaganda about the Rafale deal. This will directly help the BJP in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls next year.
Of late, Congress president Rahul Gandhi seems to have no issue to corner the Modi government. He has been continuously trying to make a scam out of the Rafale deal without an iota of evidence. In fact, Rahul Gandhi has been so obsessed with the Rafale deal that even when he was asked about AgustaWestland middleman Christian Michel’s extradition to India, the Congress president chose to reply with a comment on the Rafale deal instead. Rahul Gandhi has time and again challenged Prime Minister Modi to participate in a debate about the Rafale deal. The Gandhi scion must have been thinking that this will help him in portraying himself as a daring political leader and at the same time portraying Prime Minister Modi as a leader who is running away from the debate.
However, now that Prime Minister Modi has accepted this challenge, it is the Congress which will have nowhere to run. When its bundle of lies about the Rafale deal gets exposed in the Parliament during the winter session, the Congress and its president will be in a fix and have a hard time explaining why they were misleading the entire nation.
It won’t be for the first time that the Congress and its president would be embarrassed about such an issue. During the no-confidence motion in July 2018, Rahul Gandhi had claimed that the French president Emmanuel Macron had told him that there was no agreement signed by India and France which stopped the country from disclosing the fighter aircraft’s pricing. But the French foreign ministry denied the outrageous claims made by the Congress president. The mala fide intention and malicious propaganda of the Congress had thus been squarely exposed at that time. And now it seems that the Congress has only put itself in a fix by openly challenging Prime Minister Modi for a debate who readily accepted it. The Congress has no substance to back itself with and is relying solely on make-believe claims. Such airy and hollow arguments won’t really help the Congress and other opposition parties. It seems that this winter session is going to be an awful one for the grand old party.