Ready for debate on Rafale: Kharge says in LS
New Delhi, Dec 31: Congress Monday said in Lok Sabha that it is ready for a debate on the Rafale jet deal on Wednesday.
"Jaitley ji has thrown a challenge we are ready for a debate on January 2. Please decide a time," Congress Leader in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said.
He made these remarks soon after the House gave its nod to additional gross expenditure of Rs 85,948.86 crore during the current fiscal ending March 2019.
At 2.00 PM, when the House was to take up discussion on Supplementary Demands for Grants, Kharge repeated his demand for a joint parliamentary committee to probe the Rafale deal.
At this, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said Kharge should begin the discussion on the issue immediately and asserted that the government was ready to give a reply.
Kharge, he said, was "running away" from discussion.
Stressing that there should a discussion on Rafale deal, Jaitley said he would prove that the Congress party was spreading lies over the deal.
When the House was about to be adjourned for the day, Kharge reminded Speaker Sumitra Mahajan of the debate and sought a time for it.
Mahajan said she will decide on the timing but Kharge can't extract a decision on the date and time immediately.
"You keep your challenges to yourself. Don't challenge me," an apparently peeved Mahajan said.
Earlier in the day, Congress had again sought to raise the issue of alleged scam in the Rafale deal in Lok Sabha, inviting a sharp reaction from the government stating the Opposition should not "run away" from a debate on the issue.
Congress members have been raising the matter since the start of the Winter Session of Parliament on December 11, demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the Rafale deal.
During the Zero Hour, party members trooped into the Well displaying placards and shouting slogans on the issue.
Raising the matter, senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge alleged there has been a scam in the deal and asked why the government was not disclosing the price of jets.
He also demanded a JPC probe into the Rafale deal amid loud protests from BJP members.
In response, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said repeating the same lie again and again would not make it a truth.
The government is ready for discussion on the matter but why is the Congress "running way", the minister asked.
UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi was present in the House.
The Opposition has also been raising the issue outside Parliament.
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2019 mud attack on engineer: Maharashtra court sentences BJP minister Nitesh Rane to one-month jail
Mumbai (PTI): A court in Sindhudurg on Monday convicted Maharashtra minister Nitesh Rane in a 2019 case of pouring mud on an NHAI engineer when he was in opposition, and sentenced him to one-month imprisonment, noting that lawmakers are not supposed to take the law into their hands.
Later, the court suspended Rane's sentence, allowing him time to appeal before a higher court, while acquitting 29 other accused in the case.
"Even though Rane's intention was to raise a voice against the poor quality of work and inconvenience faced by the people, he was not supposed to humiliate or insult a public servant in public," additional sessions court judge V S Deshmukh stated.
"If such incidents continue to occur, public servants would not be able to discharge their duties with dignity," the judge noted.
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Calling the act "abuse of power", the court held that "it is the demand of time to curb such tendency".
Rane, a son of former Union minister Narayan Rane, was among 30 people charged under various offences, including rioting, assault to deter a public servant, and criminal conspiracy. He was in Congress when the incident occurred.
All the accused, including Nitesh Rane, were acquitted of these offences, as the court found insufficient evidence to support most of these claims.
However, the court found Nitesh Rane guilty of an offence under section 504 (intentional insult meant to provoke a breach of public peace) and sentenced him to one month's jail.
Rane, then a Congress MLA, had called the Sub-Divisional Engineer of the National Highway Authority, Prakash Shedekar, to a bridge over the Gad river in Kankavli on July 4, 2019, for inspecting the work to widen the Mumbai-Goa Highway.
According to the prosecution, Nitesh Rane and his followers, frustrated by the poor quality of the roadwork and waterlogging, confronted the engineer. They poured muddy water on Shedekar and forced him to walk through slush in public.
The court, after perusing the evidence on record, noted that the informant (victim) was holding a high post in the National Highway Authority.
"Despite that, he was made to walk through the muddy water in public. It would have certainly humiliated and insulted him," the court remarked.
The judge held that Rane compelling Shedekar to walk through the muddy water "was nothing but an intentional insult to the informant," and provocation which will cause him to break the public peace.
