Ready to Debate Any Issue With Chidambaram & Co., But They Must Come Up With Facts, Says Amit Shah

New Delhi: Launching a counter-attack on the opposition, including Congress, which are looking to corner BJP on issues of fuel price hike and Rafale deal, the BJP president on Saturday said that the party is ready to debate on any matter, provided the Congress comes up with facts and numbers.

Quoting party president Amit Shah’s speech at the national executive in New Delhi, BJP leader and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said, “BJP is ready to debate P Chidambaram and company. Come with facts in hand on economy, tax, GST.”

Congress, along with several other parties and outfits, is planning a nationwide protest against fuel price hike, depreciating value of rupee, high rate of joblessness and Rafale deal on Monday.

Sitharaman, at the end of day one of the two-day BJP national executive, said that the party will soon launch a nationwide campaign to share its success stories with the people. The party plans to talk about the work it did for the farmers, the welfare of ex-servicemen, setting up of the OBC commission, the growing economy, financial benefits through the implementation of GST and its work on the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016.

“We will go to the people and tell them about the benefits of schemes like Ayushman Bharat, the 1.5 times MSP that our government for the first time gave to the country’s farmers, the urea scheme, setting up of the backward classes commission, and the growth spell of our economy, which has just overtaken France in terms of respective economic sizes,” Sitharaman told reporters on Saturday about Shah’s plans for the party.

Shah further added that the Indian economy had become the sixth largest in the world and was soon looking to overtake Britain as well.

The government has recently come under immense pressure from opposition parties on the issue of rising fuel prices. In some cities, petrol has already touched a historic high of Rs 80/litre, while the Rupee has plummeted below the 72-mark against the US dollar, for the first time ever.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley recently held a press conference aimed at allaying apprehensions over the unprecedented fall of the Indian Rupee and said that the currency has either consistently strengthened or remained in a rage, not weakened.

Jaitley then went on to blame global factors behind the depreciating value of the Rupee, but no domestic determinants.

Questions have also been raised about the benefits of demonetisation given the recent RBI report in which the financial regulator claimed that 99.3% of all banned notes have returned to the banking system. The government has also been charged of changing goal posts with regard to the actual goals of currency ban.

The Rafale deal continues to be another issue which the Congress has tried to corner the BJP with.

Arun Jaitley and Rahul Gandhi recently exchanged volleys on Twitter on the contentious issue. While Jaitley rubbished all charges levelled by the Congress president, Gandhi in turn challenged Jaitley to conduct a Joint Parliamentary Committee investigation on the subject.

Former BJP ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie have publicly claimed that the Rafale fighter aircraft deal was the “biggest defence scam ever” and have accused the BJP-led Centre of “compromising national security”.