'Rahul Gandhi has become emperor of lies,' says UP minister Sidharth Nath Singh after Congress chief's Amethi visit

Lucknow: Hitting back at Rahul Gandhi for using foul language against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Uttar Pradesh government spokesperson Sidharth Nath Singh on Tuesday said the Congress president has graduated from being a shehzada (prince) to “an emperor of lies”. Alleging that the Congress chief was misleading people, which will be of no use, the senior UP minister said Gandhi needs to come out with details to substantiate his claims about the then UPA government’s decisions on the Rafale deal. [caption id=“attachment_5259071” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File photo of UP minister Sidharth Nath Singh. PTI[/caption] “The shehzada has now graduated and become a shehenshah (emperor); Rahul Gandhi has become an emperor of lies. I am saying this as he had in Amethi yesterday presented a story which is totally a lie,” Singh said. “He is trying to convert lies into truth by repeatedly hammering them,” he said, asking Rahul to stick to the truth. On a question if this will have an impact in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Singh said he does not agree “as elections are not fought on lies”. On the first day of his visit to Amethi, his Lok Sabha constituency, Rahul had said, “There is ‘chori’ (theft) in the works of Narendra Modi — Rafale, Vijay Mallya, Lalit Modi, Notebandi (demonetisation), Gabbar Singh Tax (referring to GST). There is theft in all these. One by one, we will prove that Narendra Modi ji is not a ‘chowkidaar’. Narendra Modi is a ‘chor’ (thief).” Firing a fresh salvo at the prime minister over the Rafale jet deal, the Congress president had on Monday charged that the country’s “chowkidar” Narendra Modi snatched money away from the poor. He had also asked the prime minister for answers on several issues relating to the Rafale jet fighter deal and also to clarify as to why the former French president Francois Hollande allegedly called him a “thief”. The Congress chief, in a veiled attack, also called Prime Minister Narendra Modi “India’s commander-in-thief”. On Twitter, Gandhi posted a video relating to French publication “mediapart” which carried a story last week quoting Hollande that Reliance Defence was proposed by the Indian government to partner with Dassault Aviation for the contract. “The sad truth about India’s Commander in Thief,” Gandhi said on Twitter, in what appeared to be an attack on the prime minister.