BJP rakes up my name when cornered: Robert Vadra’s comeback on Rafale row

Robert Vadra’s rebuttal comes just days after Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat alleged the Rafale deal could not see the light of the day during UPA’s tenure, as Vadra’s company had not been accepted as the “middleman”.

Responding to the BJP’s effort to link the Congress’s opposition to the Rafale jet deal to his business interests, Robert Vadra on Wednesday launched a sharp attack at the BJP, which he said, rakes up his name “every time they are cornered”.

Political opponents of Robert Vadra have often raised questions about his company’s land deals in Haryana and Rajasthan. No charges, however, have been proved. (PTI File Photo)

The rebuttal comes just days after Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat alleged the Rafale deal could not see the light of the day during UPA’s tenure, as Vadra’s company had not been accepted as the “middleman”.

In a Facebook post, Robert Vadra, who is Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s brother-in-law, called the campaign against him a “wholesale farce”.

“It used to amaze me in the beginning but now it has become a wholesale farce that the BJP rakes up my name every time they are cornered whether it is the falling rupee, soaring oil prices or this latest number when they have been totally exposed selling out the nation on Rafale,” Vadra said.

Given that the government had all the agencies at its “beck and call”, Vadra said in the post that the government and the ruling BJP were well aware that “they have indulged in a baseless political witch hunt against me for the last 4 years”.

BJP’s Rajya Sabha member Anil Baluni, responded to Vadra’s statement, saying he was trying to distract the issue at hand. Baluni alleged that he had been complicit in corruption and asked him to come clean on his relationship with Sanjay Bhandari, who he described as an arms middleman

Political opponents of Robert Vadra have often raised questions about his company’s land deals in Haryana and Rajasthan. No charges, however, have been proved.

Rahul Gandhi has taken a lead role among opposition parties to accuse the government of corruption in the Rafale deal.

The Rafale controversy took a turn last week after former French president Francois Hollande claimed that the Indian government proposed Reliance Defence’s name as the offset partner for Dassault Aviation. Modi had announced the procurement of 36 Rafale fighters after holding talks with the then French president Hollande on April 10, 2015, in Paris. The government and the two private companies have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.