New Delhi: The ruling government at the Centre led by the BJP party opened up a new issue in the controversy over the Rafale fighter jets on Monday and accused the Congress president Rahul Gandhi of well hatched international conspiracy to sabotage the fighter aircraft deal and benefit his brother-in-law Rober Vadra.

The BJP party also alleged that the earlier government led by Congress had cancelled the Rafale fighter jet deal with France as a company linked to Robert Vadra was not accepted as “middleman”.

The comments came just hours after Rahul Gandhi called the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his Twitter handle “India’s commander-in-chief” and not name the of Prime Minister specifically.

The BJP party had alleged that Rahul Gandhi did not want the Rafale deal to go, so that a firm linked to his sister Priyanka’s husband Robert Vadra may benefit and former French president Francois Hollande was also a part of the “nexus” in the deal.

BJP leader and Union minister Gajendra Shekhawat went on to claim that arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari had got links with Robert Vadra. “They (Vadra and Bhandari) represent themselves as middlemen at many defence expos but they have not got a big breakthrough yet. The then government wanted that the French firm should accept it (Vadra’s company) as the middleman. But since it did not materialize, the deal with Dassault was cancelled,” the minister said.

Mr. Shekhawat referred to the ex-French president Hollande’s claim last week, that France was not given a choice in picking any company from India except to go with Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence as an offset partner in the Rafale jet deal. He further said: “How Rahul Gandhi and he are linked as a part of nexus and are trying to sabotage the deal needs to be understood.”

The Minister for Defence, Nirmala Sitharaman too spoke over the issue that it had “international dimension” to the Congress president’s attack on the Prime Minister and said while speaking to the reporters that the comments of Hollande were not just a coincidence.

The issue of Rafale took a dramatic new course last week after the comments made by Hollande, who was then the President of France when India, announced the Rs. 59,000 crore deal. The former President was quoted as saying by the French publication ‘Mediapart’ on Friday that the government of India proposed the name of Reliance as an offset partner for the French aerospace giant.

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