BJP plans campaigns to 'expose' Congress
New Delhi: To counter the quotidian attack by the opposition Congress to the ruling NDA government on the Rafale jet deal row, the ruling BJP has planned an outreach programme to expose the 'unholy' intention of the Congress.
A highly placed party source informed that it will commence state-level programmes, where the senior leaders will hold interactive sessions over the government's motive over the fighter jet deal. "Though the programme outline has not been finalised yet, we will reach out to people and expose the Congress and their conspiracy of getting political mileage out of baseless allegations," a senior minister told Millennium Post.
Even on Monday, defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman mentioned while acknowledging "there is a perception war", and BJP will launch a nationwide campaign to counter the "smear" campaign by the Congress.
She further called the controversy an "international conspiracy".
Every day both the political parties are making scathing attacks on each other and it is said that the issue might be a setback to incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. However, most of the senior ministers of PM Narendra Modi's cabinet has come out to back him. Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Tuesday that nothing else could be expected from a leader whose "entire family" is buried in scams. Sources further mentioned that the programme will commence on the first week of October and every state wings will be communicated by the central leadership of the saffron party.
The deal to buy Rafale fighters was signed by the BJP-led government with France in 2016 after the previous Congress government's negotiations were scrapped. The UPA's plan was to buy 18 off-the-shelf jets from France's Dassault Aviation, with 108 others being assembled in India by the state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) in Bengaluru.
Meanwhile, the row took a new turn last week with ex-French president Francois Hollande's comment in an interview that the Indian government suggested Anil Ambani's Reliance Defence as an offset partner for Rafale maker Dassault, that France was given no choice. Hollande later backtracked in another interview and said only Dassault Aviation can comment on why Reliance Defence was chosen as the Offset partner.
