Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday hit back at Congress president Rahul Gandhi and accused him for spreading lies. She alleged that Gandhi was misleading the nation.
“It is a shame that the President of @INCindia is spreading lies and misleading the country. HaL has signed contracts worth Rs 26,570 crore (between 2014-2018) (tenure of the NDA government) and contracts worth rs 73,000 crore are in the pipeline. Will @rahulgandhi apologise to the country from the floor of the house and resign,” Sitharaman’s office tweeted.
“Please read the complete report in @timesofindia to which you @RahulGandhi are referring: “However, as the LS record shows, Sitharaman did not claim the orders were signed, saying they were in the works,” her office said.
The Defence minister said that looks like Rahul Gandhi need to “start from ABCs”.
“Dear Shri @RahulGandhi , looks like you really need to start from ABCs. Someone like you who is hellbent on misleading the public will quote an article even before reading it,” her office tweeted.
Earlier in the day Rahul Gandhi slammed Nirmala Sitharaman of lying about procurement orders worth Rs. 1 lakh crore for Hindustan Aeronautics Limited or HAL and demanded Sitharaman’s resignation.
Gandhi said, “When you tell one lie, you need to keep spinning out more lies, to cover up the first one. In her eagerness to defend the PM’s Rafale lie, the RM lied to Parliament. Tomorrow, RM must place before Parliament documents showing 1 Lakh crore of Govt orders to HAL. Or resign.”
Senior Congress leader Randeep Surjewala in a tweet said: “The Lying Defence Minister’s Lies Gets Exposed! Def Min claimed that procurement orders worth Rs. 1 Lakh Cr provided to HAL! HAL says Not a SINGLE PAISA has come, as Not a SINGLE ORDER has been signed! For the first time, HAL forced to take a loan of Rs. 1000 Cr to pay salaries!”
