Was Congress supporting a ‘dishonest businessman’?: Reliance dismisses Rahul Gandhi's allegations against Anil Ambani

The Reliance Group got over Rs 1 lakh crore of contracts during the UPA rule and Congress president Rahul Gandhi's accusations on Anil Ambani are "patently untrue statements", a company spokesperson said on Sunday, rebutting Gandhi's charge that Ambani is "a dishonest businessman and crony capitalist". Reacting to Gandhi's recent media statements, the Reliance Group, issued a clarification, saying that the Congress president "has attributed no basis to these claims whatsoever, and neither has he provided any credible evidence at all to justify his derogatory and defamatory campaign".

The Indian Conglomerate company said Gandhi, in a "cavalier fashion, is continuing his campaign of calumny, disinformation, distortion and malicious lies", adding that he has singled out their group chairman Anil D Ambani as allegedly a “crony capitalist and dishonest businessman” - all obviously patently untrue statements.

"We at the Reliance Group have chosen to ignore Rahul Gandhi's comments with continuing patience and restraint. We likewise dismiss his latest remark as yet another one of his multiple untruthful utterances, in the heat and dust of his electoral campaign, for which he has recently been facing contempt proceedings in the highest court of the land, the Honourable Supreme Court," the spokesperson said.

Questioning if the UPA regime was supporting an alleged "crony capitalist and dishonest businessman" between 2004 and 2014, the Reliance Group requested Gandhi to clarify why the company was awarded projects of over Rs 1 lakh crore across diverse infrastructure sectors such as power, telecom, roads, metro by the Congress-led government for 10 long years.

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"We would like to remind Rahul Gandhi, that it was during the 10 year Congress-led UPA regime between 2004 and 2014 that Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group was awarded projects of over Rs 1,00,000 crore across diverse key nation-building infrastructure sectors such as power, telecom, roads, metro by a government led by none other than Rahul Gandhi's own political party - the Congress," the statement read.

"The Reliance Group takes this opportunity to request Rahul Gandhi to clarify whether his government, for 10 long years, was supporting an alleged crony capitalist and dishonest businessman, to use Gandhi's own words," it added.

It has been a quite long time that Congress president Rahul Gandhi is accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of corruption and wrongdoings in the Rafale fighter jet deal, which the BJP has outrightly denied.

Gandhi has alleged that Modi-led BJP dispensation had conducted "parallel negotiations" and cancelled the previous deal agreed by the UPA government, and gave Ambani firm's Reliance Defence the offset Rafale contract worth Rs 30,000 crore.