''Modi cannot defend himself for a second in front of me. Because he has stolen your money,” he says at a public gathering in Bidar, Karnataka.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday threw an open challenege to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to have a face-to-face open debate with him on the Rafale fighter aircraft deal issue. He accused Mr. Modi of turning his back on responding to the questions raised over the issue in Parliament.

Mr. Gandhi was addressing a public gathering at the Nehru Stadium in Bidar, Karnataka. Though the rally, named as ''Jana Dhwani'' (people’s voice), was projected to have been organised to felicitate him, it was practically meant to kick-start the Congress campaign for the coming general election.

“In my speech on the no-trust motion, I exposed the Rafale deal in Parliament. Mr. Modi, in response, spoke on everything else and chose to ignore it. I know he would not respond in Parliament. Let us have an open and face-to-face debate on the issue and let the country know what actually happened in the deal. I am sure that Mr. Modi cannot defend himself for a second in front of me. Because he has stolen your money,” he said.

By devoting almost half of his 35-minute speech to “exposing” the BJP and Mr. Modi’s alleged nepotism in the deal, Mr. Gandhi clearly set the Congress’s agenda for 2019 Lok Sabha polls. He went on to explain how Mr. Modi cancelled the original deal, which was signed during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime, just to snatch thousands of jobs from the country’s youth and to financially help “his industrialist friend Anil Ambani”.

Move is to help Anil Ambani, he alleges

Mr. Gandhi said:

“In the original deal made during UPA period, HAL [Hindustan Aeronautics Limited], a state-owned company that had an experience of building aircraft for the Army and the Air Force for the last 70 years, was involved. The price negotiated by the UPA was ₹ 570 crore an aircraft. Now, the Modi government’s new deal has replaced HAL with an Anil Ambani-promoted company which had been floated just 10 days before the deal and had never built an aircraft.

''The number of aircraft to be bought was reduced from 126 in the original deal to just 26 in the fresh deal. The price of the aircraft was also hiked to Rs. 1,670 crore in the fresh deal. Mr. Modi thus snatched your jobs by removing HAL from the deal and stole your money by increasing the price of the aircraft to help Mr. Anil Ambani.”