Of late, the Congress President, Rahul Gandhi has been actively making allegations of crony capitalism against PM Modi and industrialist-billionaire, Anil Ambani. In order to somehow invent an electoral issue and launch a tirade against the Modi government, Rahul Gandhi has been consistently making baseless claims of PM Modi extending undue benefits to Anil Ambani in the Rafale fighter jets deal.
However, the Reliance Group has exposed false propaganda being run by Gandhi and has strongly rebutted his false allegations. Reliance Group has disclosed that the group got contracts worth over Rs. 1 lakh crore during the tenure of the UPA government. The Reliance Group also claimed that the Congress president is continuing his campaign “calumny, disinformation, distortion and malicious lies”.
Reacting to Rahul Gandhi’s statements, the statement by Reliance Group read the Congress president “has attributed no basis to these claims whatsoever, and neither has he provided any credible evidence at all to justify his derogatory and defamatory campaign”. The statement added that Gandhi, in a “cavalier fashion, has continued his campaign of calumny, disinformation, distortion and malicious lies”. It further read, “He has singled out our group chairman Anil D Ambani as allegedly a crony capitalist and dishonest businessman – all obviously patently untrue statements.” Referring to projects worth over Rs. 1 lakh crore awarded to the conglomerate during the UPA regime, the statement further added, “The Reliance Group takes this opportunity to request Rahul Gandhi to clarify whether his government, for 10 long years, was supporting an alleged crony capitalist and dishonest businessman, to use Gandhi’s own words.”
A 2018 ET story, officials speaking on condition of anonymity had told the media outlet that projects worth Rs. 1,00,000 crore were awarded to the Anil Ambani led conglomerate by the UPA government during its last seven years. According to an official, “All these projects were with government agencies. We are looking at the processing time that went into these projects, and whether due processes were followed.” It is interesting to note that the Reliance Infrastructure spokesperson said that the company won all its build, operate and transfer (BOT) and public-private partnership (PPP) projects when the UPA was in power. The Reliance Group has every right to ask that why Rahul Gandhi did not find all those deals suspicious and now on what basis is he making allegations of crony capitalism against the conglomerate.
It seems that Rahul Gandhi has set different rules for himself and for PM Modi. He claims that the Congress espouses socialist and poor friendly principles while the BJP works only for the corporates and big business houses. However, Rahul Gandhi remains silent about a plethora of projects awarded to the Reliance Group during the UPA tenure. With his baseless lies and imaginary claims of crony capitalism, Rahul Gandhi is setting new highs in hypocrisy.