It is too late for Congress to realise that in this day and age of knowledge the lies are only hurting their own credibility, which is any way at an all-time low and nobody is getting fooled by this. If the estimates from the first four phases of Lok Sabha elections are to go by, the people of India have rejected Rahul Gandhi and his lie factory.
The Indian National Congress seems to have given up on every ethic and rule in a bid to make their crown prince Rahul Gandhi the next Prime Minister of India. I am not claiming that they had any strong value-based approach to politics earlier but at least it was not this bad and they had some semblance to “appear” good. This too is lost now. The kind of lies, the Congress is peddling is unmatched. If one were to fact check Rahul’s speeches then every line will undoubtedly have, at the least, exaggerated claims, half-truths, full lies, fraudulent claims, unverifiable claims, invented events, concocted situations, misleading opinions and fabricated events.
I could probably write an entire book on this, however, I shall restrict myself to list down Rahul’s top four lies this election season.
Yesterday, a fire broke out at Shastri Bhawan which has a lot of offices belonging to central ministries. The usual reaction of the public is to express shock and the hope that fire is brought under control but not the Congress president’s. He immediately latched onto the tragedy and claimed, “Modi ji, burning of files won’t save you. Your day of judgement is coming”. This meant that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expecting a defeat in this general elections and hence resorting to destruction of evidence relating to unknown scams.
The fire department later sent out an official statement saying that some furniture kept on the terrace had caught fire and no important files were destroyed. What got destroyed though, was the already low credibility of Rahul Gandhi. The fire was controlled within minutes but the legacy of lies that Rahul Gandhi leaves behind will haunt him for years.
This is one of the most ridiculous claims anyone has ever made. What is Rahul Gandhi thinking? Rahul Gandhi says, “Ab Narendra Modi ne naya kanoon banaya hai jisme ek line likhi hai ki adivasiyon ko goli se maara ja sakega. Kanoon mein likha hai ki adivasiyon par akraman hoga”.
What Rahul Gandhi was presumably trying to say was about the "Amendments to the Indian Forest Act 1927" which “proposes” giving more powers to forest officers to enable them to fight people who commit offences under the forest act like tree felling, poaching etc. In this “proposed” law, the Forest Officers “could” be given powers to use firearms against people committing an offence. Mind you, this law has not been “passed” as claimed by Rahul Gandhi. Secondly, it is not “Narendra Modi” who has “passed” it. This law is under “consideration” and is lying with “all” the state governments for their views thereon. Further, there is no mention of “tribals”. Now do you understand the level of lies Rahul Gandhi is saying? Unbelievable.
Rafale deal “scam” is one of the major points on which the Indian National Congress is fighting the General Elections 2019 and Rahul is leading from the front when it comes to lying. The list of lies is so lengthy and spread across so many rallies that I am pointing out the most important and blatant ones here:
Rahul Gandhi claimed that the French Media was saying Reliance Defense of Anil Ambani was made a partner in offset deal of Rafale jet deal as a quid pro quo for Dassault snagging the deal. This lie was caught by the Supreme Court in its “Rafale judgment” and a clean chit was given to the government. I have no hesitation in saying that this deal is probably the only defense deal in India which has received a “green signal or no scam status” from the Supreme Court and Comptroller & Auditor General of India. The apex court, in its judgment, said that the Indian government played no role in choosing the offsets partners.
Also read: India calls out bluff linking Rafale deal with €143.7 million tax waiver for Anil Ambani's firm
Rahul claimed that Modi “gave” Rs 30,000 crores to his “friend” Anil Ambani in the Rafale deal. This is so ridiculous. Firstly, the offset value that Reliance has got from Rafale is approximately worth Rs 750 crores and not Rs 30,000 crores. PM Modi did not “give” it to the company, Dassault gave it. There are many more such offset partners. The entire rafale deal is worth about Rs 70,000 crores and the country is ready to use aircraft from France.
The Congress chief went onto embarrassing himself at the international level too. He claimed that ex-French President Hollande called PM Modi a thief and that the Indian government had asked to include Reliance as an offset partner. However, Hollande denied all such allegations. The French government issued an official statement to counter Rahul’s claim. Imagine, a foreign government writing this on their official document.
He has made claims that the UPA had supposedly signed the Rafale deal at various price points. He started with Rs 520 crore and then increased it to Rs 526 crores, Rs 540 crore and finally RS 700 crore. However, the truth is that the then defence minister AK Anthony has said that the government did not have money to buy Rafale jets and the Indian Air Force kept waiting for a decade.
Having lost the initial case filed before the Supreme Court with regard to the Rafale deal, a review petition was filed challenging the apex court’s earlier decision. During the course of the hearings, there was a question regarding admissibility of certain documents which the government was claiming were secret and stolen hence must not be considered.
The Supreme Court then said that the documents can be admissible as evidence. That was it. This happened on April 10 and nowhere the Supreme Court had delivered any judgment on the Rafale deal review petition. However, Rahul had different plans. The Congress scion directly claimed that the apex court has made it clear that PM Modi committed a “theft” and attributed the phrase “Chowkidar Chor Hai” to the Supreme Court. BJP leader Meenakshi Lekhi filed a contempt petition before the SC and they observed that the remarks made by Rahul on the Rafale verdict were “incorrectly attributed” to them.
Also read: Why Rahul Gandhi should be worried after Supreme Court rap
Rahul Gandhi made a hasty retreat and issued a 22-page affidavit “regretting” the use of such words in the heat of election campaign. However, the SC was not too pleased with it and pointed out a few contradictory statements in his apology affidavit itself. Senior advocate and Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi was appearing on behalf of the lie machine Rahul Gandhi and has agreed to file a fresh affidavit. We can only hope that he apologises in clear terms this time. Dragging the highest court in petty political fights is so contrary to the claims of respecting institutions that Rahul Gandhi keeps making.
Like I said earlier, if I start listing more, probably a small booklet can be made out of Rahul’s lies. His range of utterances is sometimes so absurd that one can only laugh them off. He has claimed that Modi waived off loans of top 15 businessmen, worth Rs 3 lakh crores (approx). He said he will fund the Minimum Income Guarantee scheme, which is Congress’s biggest poll ploy. From money belonging to Mehul Choksi, Nirav Modi and Ambani, he has given different figures for Rafale jet purchase price when the pricing has been kept a secret. He has claimed that Modi has stolen money from the poor. He also said that GST is a scam and demonetisation was to help rich people steal money from the poor. The claims are wild, baseless and dangerous. It is almost strange how one person can go to such an extent for power. It is too late for Congress to realise that in this day and age of knowledge the lies are only hurting their own credibility, which is any way at an all-time low and nobody is getting fooled by this. If the estimates from the first four phases of Lok Sabha elections are to go by, the people of India have rejected Rahul Gandhi and his lie factory.
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