New Delhi: While the Supreme Court (SC) has caught Congress president Rahul Gandhi redhanded lying in as much as attributing his ‘chowkidar chor hai’ jibe against Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the apex court, now the Congress scion has moved on from ‘regret’ to ‘ignorance’.

On Monday Rahul Gandhi submitted his explanation in response to the SC’s show-cause notice to his previous reply in the criminal contempt case lodged by BJP’s Meenakshi Lekhi.

Meanwhile, while Gandhi has been incessantly saying “chowkidar chor hai”, his SC statement addresses the prime minister with an “honourable”.

Gandhi said that he had made the statement based on the SC’s acceptance of the review petition in the case of the Rafale jet deal in its order passed on April 10 “without having seen or read the order”.

Gandhi, indirectly accepted that he had no idea of what the SC had actually said in the matter and that he had acted on hearsay. In his Monday statement, he said he believed the reportage he got on the matter “through electronic and social media reports on the late morning of 10.04.2019 while he was travelling in Amethi”.

Gandhi’s affidavit said he “walked into the District Collector’s Room in Amethi at approximately 12:45 p.m. for filing his nomination and came of out the room at approximately 1:15 p.m. An unscheduled, gathered crowd of local journalists belonging to the press corps accosted the answering Respondent [Gandhi] and sought his reaction to the Hon’ble Supreme Court’s order of earlier that morning.”

Gandhi goes on to say that he had not “seen, read or analysed” the order of the apex court and made the comment off the cuff. “The answering Respondent’s [Gandhi] brief statement to the media was made in this context of and during hectic political campaigning without having seen, read or analyzed the order at that stage.

His affidavit confirmed that he made the statement “to similar effect…in the day by the Respondent [Gandhi] at Katihar in Bihar where the Respondent [Gandhi] flew the same day after Amethi.”

“The said statements were made by the answering Respondent [Gandhi] in Hindi in a rhetorical flourish in the heat of the moment. It was during a political campaign without a readable copy of the Supreme Court order being available on its website and, therefore, without the answering Respondent having seen or read the order and relying upon electronic and social media reportage and the version of workers and activists surrounding the Respondent,” Gandhi’s reply read.

Moreover, even as Gandhi accepted that the Rafale matter is “sub judice”, he also “took the opportunity to reaffirm his stand and belief” that “the Rafale deal is a tainted transaction and a gross and brazen abuse of executive power and a leading example of the corruption of the BJP Government led by Prime Minister Modi, which deserves to be investigated…”