Modi slams Congress: No Quattrocchi mama or Michel uncle in NDA’s Rafale deal

In his first public remarks since the Supreme Court rejected judicial intervention in the Rafale deal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Sunday targetted the Congress and said that the party is “lying” and is “frustrated” as there was no “Quattrocchi mama” or “Christian Michel uncle” in the NDA government’s defence deals.

In his first public remarks since the Supreme Court rejected judicial intervention in the Rafale deal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Sunday targetted the Congress and said that the party is “lying” and is “frustrated” as there was no “Quattrocchi mama” or “Christian Michel uncle” in the NDA government’s defence deals.

Addressing a rally in former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s Lok Sabha constituency of Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh just days after the BJP lost power to the Congress in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, Modi questioned the Congress on why it did not strengthen the Air Force despite demands by the military after the Kargil war.

He said: “Humare liye dal se bada desh hai…Inhe desh ki parwah nahi hai…Modi ko woh kisi bhi tarah ek daag laga dena chahte hain…Lekin uske liye desh ko taak pe kyon rakh diya gaya hai. (For us, the country is bigger than the party. They (Congress) do not care about the country, they just want to put a blot on Modi…they have put the country at stake for that).” Asking if the Army should have modern weapons or not, Modi said: “Desh dekh raha hai ki Congress kin taakaton ke saath khadi hai…Aise kin deshon? (The country is watching who the Congress is standing with and what kind of forces and which countries).” The Prime Minister also asked why people clap in Pakistan, when “some politicians” in India speak.

Attacking the Congress on defence deals, Modi said: “Vayu sena ko majboot nahi hone diya. Kiske dabav mein? Raksha saudon ke mamle mein congress ka itihas Bofors ghotale wale Quattrochi mama ka raha hai. (The Congress did not strengthen the Air Force? Under whose pressure? In defence deals, the Congress’s history includes people like [Ottavio] Quattrocchi, steeped in the Bofors scam).”

Modi also said that when Christian Michel was brought to India in the AgustaWestland chopper deal, which took place during the Congress regime, “everyone saw how the Congress sent its lawyer to save” him.

Modi also said that the Congress is “frustrated” and “lying”. “Kya woh isliye bhadki hui hai…jhoot par jhoot bol rahi hai kyonki BJP sarkar jo raksha saude kar rahi hai koi Quattrocchi mama nahi hai, koi Christian Michel uncle nahi hai…kya isliye woh ab nyaya palika par avishwas ka mauhaul paida karne mein jut gayi hai,” he said.

“(Is it frustrated telling lies because defence deals in BJP Government do not have Quattrocchi Mama, nor does it have Christian Michel uncle? Is this why they are also creating an environment of mistrust against the judiciary?).”

The Prime Minister said that the UPA government did not care about Armymen or farmers and did not bother about implementing the Swaminathan Committee report. He said that the loan waiver promised by the Congress was a “fraud”.

“Karja nahi dhokha hai (It’s not a waiver but fraud),” he said adding that the BJP would go house-to-house, to tell the truth about the Congress.

Maintaining that he had a lot to share about the “sins of the Congress”, Modi said that if the Congress government had come back to power again in 2014, the Tejas aircraft would have been out of service and alleged that Congress could not even give proper bulletproof jackets to soldiers.

In Rae Bareli, Modi also inaugurated different projects worth Rs 1,000 crore and flagged off the 900th coach manufactured at the Modern Rail Coach factory in Lalganj, which was among Sonia Gandhi’s pet projects.

Alleging that previous governments did nothing for Rae Bareli, Modi said that the project was given approval in 2007 with a target of manufacturing 1,000 coaches in a year. However, even after its set-up was complete, the factory only fitted and painted coaches, which were actually manufactured in Kapoorthala. He said that until 2014, only 3 per cent of its machines were operational but within three months of forming the government, a coach was manufactured completely at this factory.

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