Defence Minister lying in HAL deal

​New Delhi: Slamming Nirmala Sitharaman for "lying" in Parliament over Rafale issue, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday demanded Defence Minister's resignation. "When you tell one lie, you need to keep spinning out more lies, to cover up the first one. In her eagerness to defend the PM's Rafale lie, the RM (Raksha Mantri) lied to Parliament. 

Tomorrow, RM must place before Parliament documents showing Rs 1 Lakh crore of govt orders to HAL. Or resign," he tweeted. Rahul Gandhi questioned her over a report that said that India's leading defence PSU HAL is keenly awaiting formalisation of orders adding up to Rs 1 lakh crore mentioned by Sitharaman during the discussion on the Rafale fighter deal in the Lok Sabha . The report quoted a senior HAL management official as saying that no actual order had either been placed or a single rupee had been released to the company. 

Meanwhile, the Congress accused the Defence Minister and her senior colleagues of spinning a "web of lies" around the Rafale deal issue to hide the Prime Minister's "falsehood". A day after the government's defence in the Lok Sabha over the Rafale deal, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera said: "The ministers in the court of this 'king' are lying, to hide the falsehood of the 'king'. The Defence Minister said lies. It is not her fault… her fault is that she's a minister in a court of a 'king', who has uttered such a huge lie. And to hide that lie, the entire cabinet is lying," Khera said.