After Jaitley’s 15 posers, Rahul’s 24-hr challenge

Hours after Arun Jaitley posed 15 questions to the Congress in a Facebook post accusing Rahul Gandhi of "peddling untruth" on the Rafale fighter jet deal, the Congress president had a dare of his own for the Finance Minister. Calling the fighter jet deal a "great Rafale robbery", Rahul Gandhi asked Jaitley to institute a Joint Parliamentary Committee on it, and said he would wait for a response for 24 hours. The Congress president, in his tweet, also attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi accusing him of "protecting his friend".

Earlier, Jaitley fired his loaded questions and alleged that the UPA government had "seriously compromised national security requirement" with slow and casual approach in deciding in June 2012 to re-examine a decision taken in June 2001 for procurement of 126 aircraft.

The deal was thus not only delayed by the UPA for over a decade at a time when India's squadron strength was depleting because of age, but the Congress is also spreading falsehood on pricing and procedure to further delay the defence procurement "so that India's defence preparedness further suffers," Jaitley asserted in the blog.

But even as he defended PM Modi for personally reducing the requirement to only 36 medium multi-role combat Rafale aircraft, instead of 126, Jaitley did not respond to the Congress charge why the price being paid has trebled, wriggling out with the alibi that "I am constrained by the secrecy clause, which exists in the contract…’’ He, however, tried to claim what the UPA had agreed upon was just the aircraft without any weaponry while what the Modi government negotiated is a fully loaded aircraft with the weaponry.