Arun Jaitley hits out at Rahul Gandhi in new Facebook post, says Congress manufacturing fake Rafael controversy

New Delhi: Rejecting the accusations made by the Congress party relating to the Rafale fighter jet deal between India and France, Union Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday slammed the main opposition party for creating a fake controversy over the issue.

In a new Facebook post, Jaitley hit out at the Congress president Rahul Gandhi for "manufacturing fake Rafale controversy", which he claimed has failed to cut ice as the fighter jet deal was a government-to-government agreement.

Jaitley also claimed that there was no involvement of any private player in the Rafale fighter jet deal.

The Congress Party and the Fake Issue of Rafale https://t.co/M4vMxDFCTI — Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) July 24, 2018

The veteran BJP leader maintained that in the absence of no real issue, the grand old party is redefining secularism as a euphemism for majority bashing and in the process antagonising the majority against itself.

The Congress party, he said, realises that there is a danger of the next election becoming a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's performance, in his explosive Facebook blog.

"The popularity gap between the Prime Minister and his competitors is very wide," he wrote, adding that the Congress is either non-existent or a poor third or fourth in states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, which account for 50 percent of the Lok Sabha seats.

The Congress is, therefore, faced with the prospect of effectively contesting only about 225 seats where it will face a direct clash with the BJP, Jaitley said in the Facebook post.

"What does the party do if its leader has inherent and inbuilt limitations? It had been stigmatised by corruption and in contra-distinction Prime Minister Modi has led a scam free Government. Its strategy, therefore, is one of distortion. If you have no issue, manufacture one. Hence the Rafale's fake controversy," the senior BJP leader said in the blog titled 'The Congress Party and the fake issue of Rafale'.

Here is what Arun Jaitley wrote on Facebook over the Rafale deal.

The explosive blog from Jaitley comes days after Rahul Gandhi made serious allegations against the Narendra Modi government and even accused Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman of lying on the issue.

Rahul made this remark during a debate on the no-confidence motion moved by the Opposition against the NDA government, which was badly defeated in the Lok Sabha.

In the wake of a controversy over the Rafale deal, France issued a statement saying that there was indeed a secrecy clause in the deal which restricted the two sides from revealing crucial information.

Despite the clarification from the Government of France, Rahul Gandhi said that he stood by his remarks.