Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Monday claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had lied out of habit at Amethi in Uttar Pradesh while inaugurating a new manufacturing unit for AK-203 rifles on Sunday.
“I laid the foundation stone of the ordnance factory in Amethi in 2010,” Gandhi tweeted on Monday morning. “For many years it has produced small arms. Yesterday you went to Amethi and as is your habit, you lied again. Have you no shame?”
Modi, while addressing a rally after the inauguration, accused previous governments of neglecting the armed forces, adding that the manufacture of AK-203, a modernised version of the AK-47, should have started more than eight years ago. The prime minister attacked the United Progressive Alliance government, alleging that “they sat on Rafale deal for years”.
Modi had said that the rifles would be known as “Made in Amethi”. “When the foundation was laid by your MP, it was said that work will start in 2010,” Modi had said, referring to Gandhi, according to NDTV. “It was his government but it did not happen. Why believe such a person? For three years, it was not decided what kind of weapons will be made here and land was also not made available.”
Union minister Smriti Irani hit back at Gandhi’s criticism. “You are so afraid of development in Amethi that you didn’t bother to see that yesterday a joint venture was launched at Korva [Ordnance Factory],” Irani tweeted on Monday. “This is a joint venture between India and Russia to produce AK 203 rifles.”
Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh blamed the Congress, saying the factory had not functioned after it was inaugurated. “Rahul Gandhi, wish you were right, fact remains that nothing came out of the factory,” he tweeted. “Your stooges didn’t let it function, nor did they care about the armed forces or the security of the nation.”
OIC invitation to India a ‘huge embarrassment’: Congress
Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari rejected the government’s claims that the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation inviting India was a diplomatic success as the group adopted a resolution condemning the “atrocities and human rights violations” in Jammu and Kashmir.
“The Modi government touted the invitation to the OIC as a great diplomatic success but it has turned out to be a huge embarrassment for India,” Tewari said, according to Hindustan Times. “The OIC resolution not just condemned Indian terrorism in Kashmir but also called India an occupier in Kashmir.”
India had issued a statement in response to the OIC resolution saying that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of the country, and the matter is “strictly internal to India”.
The resolution on Kashmir came a day after India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj urged the organisation to come together to fight the global menace of terrorism and extremism. Swaraj had been invited as “the guest of honour” to the inaugural plenary of the foreign ministers’ conclave of the OIC, which is a group of Muslim majority nations, in Abu Dhabi on March 1 and March 2.
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