Javadekar attacks Rahul over CBI row

New Delhi :  The BJP on Thursday hit back at Congress President Rahul Gandhi accusing him of “spreading falsehood” over the issue of CBI Director Alok Verma and said that he was living in “hallucination”.

“Congress has lost all hopes of becoming relevant and it has also lost patience. And therefore in their dreams also they are dreaming only about Rafale. It appears Rahulji is living in hallucination,” HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters at the party headquarters.

“He is manufacturing lies on Rafale everyday. Today he came out with two falsehoods. The first falsehood is that the CBI Director was removed but the fact is that he was not removed. He has been sent on leave. No 1 (Verma) and No 2 (Special Director Rakesh Asthana) have been sent on leave,” he said.

The second falsehood was that “Verma was sent on leave because he was inquiring about Rafale”. “There is no inquiry. There is no case of inquiry on Rafale. He (Gandhi) says that papers were taken from his office. This is utterly fallacious, malicious and a manufactured lie,” he said.

The BJP leader’s remarks came soon after the Congress President sharpened his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying Verma was “removed in panic” midnight because he was going to begin a probe into the controversial Rafale deal that would have been “suicidal” for Modi.

Slamming the Congress, Javadekar said, “Why they are doing this? Because Congress and Gandhi think that he has lost a chance to pocket the heavy commission through his friend Sanjay Bhandari if he was the middleman.”

He said people were more mature than Rahul Gandhi. “He (Gandhi) lives in hallucination. The country has not witnessed such an immature politician. He failed in his two-minute press conference today on matter, on manner and on method,” he said.

Javadekar said Gandhi has lost civility and therefore he was “cursing” the Prime Minister day in and day out.

Accusing the Congress of having misused the CBI when it was in power, Javadekar said, “Who misused the CBI. We never interfered. Actually people are accusing us now that why we did not interfere in time. There was anarchy-like situation developing and we should have interfered earlier. But we never interfered.”

He said that even after finding out that a ‘Look Out’ circular, which was being issued to Karti Chidambaram, was leaked and even after the Aircel Maxis deal case report was found in the bedroom of erstwhile finance Minister P. Chidambaram the government had not interfered.

“The coal scam accused had easy access to the then CBI Director (Ranjit Sinha) and the case is in court. Moin Qureshi was the go between as always. And there are many cases which show tremendous interference when they used, misused and abused the CBI,” he added.

Published on: Oct 25, 2018 at 20:58 IST

IANS