Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday repeated his demand and said Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman must resign over the irregularities in the Rafale deal.

Attacking Sitharaman, whom he referred as Rafale Minister (RM), Rahul said she has been “tasked with defending corruption”. In government parlance, RM refers to ‘Raksha Mantri’ (defence minister).

“[She] has been caught lying again [on the Rafale deal]. Her position is untenable and she must resign,” he said.

Rahul was responding to a report published in the Hindustan Times where former chief of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) TS Raju was quoted as saying that the Rafale fighter plane could have been manufactured in India and HAL had the capability to do it.

Tweeting a link of the report, Rahul said, “The former HAL chief, TS Raju, has nailed her [Sitharaman] lie, that HAL didn’t have the capability to build the Rafale.”

Of late, the Congress has been mounting pressure on the Modi government over the Rafale deal. The party has demanded a Joint Parliamentary Committee on the issue.

On Wednesday, senior Congress submitted an eight-page memorandum to the Comptroller and Auditor General Rajiv Mehrishi to undertake an independent audit of the deal and fix accountability.