Assam PCC on Tuesday criticised Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for demanding an apology from Congress President Rahul Gandhi for allegedly spreading lies about BJP's role in the Rafale Deal.
Yogi Adityanath has "no moral right" to seek an apology from Gandhi when his leader Narendra Modi has favoured his friend Anil Ambani's Reliance Defence Limited by giving it the Rafale fighter jet contract and denied PSU Hindustan Aeronautics Limited of "its right", APCC spokesperson Prodyut Bordoloi told reporters here.
The BJP government has a "tradition of lying" and by lying to the SC it has once again proved that it has no respect for institutions, whether it be the highest court of the land, RBI, CBI or CEC, the APCC spokesperson said.
"The APCC would like to point out that the BJP government's foundation is based on lies - they have been lying to the people of the country since coming to power and now they have been caught lying to the Supreme Court as well", he said.
"Yogi Adityanath is a promoter of hate politics and is infamous for his communal comments. It is unfortunate that such a person has come to Assam, which is historically known as a land of Pancha-Tirtha (communal harmony) since ages'', the spokesperson said.
The Supreme Court judgement points out how the BJP government at the Centre lied to it, he said.
According to the SC judgement the material placed before it shows that the government has not disclosed pricing details other than the basic price of the aircraft even to the Parliament on the ground that sensitivity of pricing details could affect national security, apart from breaching the agreement between the two countries.
The pricing details have, however, been shared with the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and its report has been examined by the Public Accounts Committee(PAC). But only a "redacted portion of the report was placed before the Parliament and is in the public domain", he said.
From the judgement it is seen that the government claims about pricing details being shared with CAG and its report being examined by PAC are nothing but lies as PAC chairman Mallikarjun Kharge has said no reports have been presented either before PAC or by it before Parliament, he said.
"So our question is where is the CAG report and where is the PAC report that has been examined as claimed by the BJP government", he asked.
On Yogi Adityanath's question on why the Congress led government took so long to go ahead with the purchase of the aircraft, Bordoloi said "We would like to enlighten the BJP that the requirement for defence aircrafts was communicated to the central government by the IAF in 2001 when the BJP government was in power but they sat on it for three years".
When Congress came to power in 2004, the process for the tender was started and was completed in December 2007. "This is normal as it is very technical,"" he said.
In 2007 the tender was floated and the aircraft of all the six companies who had applied were tested by the IAF, which is a technical requirement, from 2008 to 2012, Bordoloi added.
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