'Rahul Gandhi played on Quattrocchi's lap, his audiotape on Rafale is fake': Key quotes from Arun Jaitley's rebuttal in Lok Sabha

As the Rafale deal debate flared up in Lok Sabha on Wednesday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley targetted the Congress leadership by raising AgustaWestland, National Herald cases and making a veiled reference to Ottavio Quattrocchi. Jaitley’s attack came after Congress president Rahul Gandhi cited a purported audiotape of a Goa minister but refused to authenticate it. Here are the five key statements the Union minister made in the Lower House: 1. “Earlier, he (Rahul Gandhi) manufactured a conversation between him and the former French president (François Hollande). Today, he tried to produce a tape but is too scared to authenticate it. He is lying; the tape that he is talking about is totally fake.”

#लोकसभा में #RafaleDeal पर चर्चा जारी,

राहुल गांधी झूठ बोल रहे हैं, वो जिस टेप की बात कर रहे हैं वो पूरी तरह फर्जी है इसलिए सत्यता नहीं बताई: अरुण जेटली#LokSabha pic.twitter.com/bA9RNxdzNj

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2. “If the fingers point at you (Congress leaders) in AgustaWestland, National Herald, and Bofors, then it is a bit too much. Today, they have the audacity to raise an allegation against us.” 3. “Rahul Gandhi has been talking about abbreviations. So was he playing in the lap of a certain ‘Q’ (Quattrocchi) when he was younger?” 4. “Some people and families understand the arithmetic of money but cannot comprehend issues of national security.” 5. “There are some people who have a natural dislike for truth. Every word spoken for the last six months on this subject, including in this House (by them) are false….He has a legacy of speaking falsehood,” 6. “Rafale issue is not a policy or administrative or governance matter. It is an investigation into whether it was a clean or an unclean deal. The Supreme Court has said that ‘we have satisfied our conscience’ about pricing, HAL, offset. What will Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) do in an investigation?” 7. “The committee headed by (late) Shankaranand gave a report saying that they were not kickbacks but winding up charges. The JPC whitewashed the fraud of corruption. And the JPC probe is now being demanded by those with a legacy of corruption, wanting to invent allegations of corruption as we have given a clean government.” With inputs from agencies