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| - Fact Check: Rahul Gandhi's claim on Ordnance factory of Amethi is misleading
A new war has erupted between Congress president Rahul Gandhi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over Ordnance factory in Amethi.
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India Today Fact Check
PM Modi was not wrong. He mentioned in his speech that Rahul Gandhi laid the foundation stone of the ordnance factory in 2007.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of lying about Amethi ordnance factory. Rahul Gandhi claimed that he laid the foundation stone in 2010 and that the factory has been producing small weapons for years.
"You went to Amethi yesterday and spoke a lie, which you are used to doing. Are you not ashamed?" he asked the prime minister in a tweet in Hindi.
,
2010
? Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 4, 2019
PM Narendra Modi visited Amethi, the parliamentary constituency of Rahul Gandhi, on Sunday and launched an Indo-Russian joint venture to manufacture AK-203 rifles in the ordnance factory of Korwa.
Union minister Smriti Irani quickly reacted over Rahul's tweet and called it "a lie".
Posting two old images of the Congress president, she claimed that Rahul had forgotten the exact year when he had laid foundation stone for the ordnance factory.
2007 2010 2007 2010? - @RahulGandhi pic.twitter.com/IDZyZ6kS2o Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) March 4, 2019
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found that Rahul Gandhi was wrong in claiming that he had laid the foundation stone of the ordnance factory in Korwa, Amethi, in 2010. He laid the foundation stone in 2007 but production began much later in the factory. Even prime minister had also mentioned about this in his speech.
The prime minister said, "In 2007, the Amethi MP laid the foundation of this factory. At that time, it was said that manufacturing would begin by 2010. But friends, even after three years of the foundation stone ceremony, the government couldn't decide that what kind of weapon will be manufacturedwhere this factory would come up... Even the land was not provided for this project. Friends, the building of the factory had been delayed until 2013, wherein the manufacturing should have been started in 2010. After the construction of the building, somehow manufacturing started here but even then, the production of advanced rifles did not commence."
This portion of the PM's speech in Hindi can be heard after 21 minutes of the video here.
We found that the exact date of the foundation stone laying ceremony for the Ordnance Factory was December 2, 2007. Amethi MP Rahul Gandhi laid the foundation stone for the 41st Ordnance factory in the country. This was mentioned in the in-house journal of the Indian Ordnance Factories Organisation in 2007.
This factory which was initially planned for the manufacture of Close Quarter Battle (CQB) Carbines and other small weapons was marred by controversy from the very beginning.
A Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report on Union government (Defence Services) Army and Ordnance Factories of 2011 called this project "injudicious".
CAG pulled up the Government for the "selection of inappropriate site" and said the project is "likely to be delayed very badly".
The Times of India also reported on the same in August 2010.
The Ministry of Defence sanctioned the Ordnance Factory in 2007 to manufacture 45,000 carbines per year. Initial investment was estimated to be 408 crore.
Deadline for completion of the project was October 2010 but it was extended to March 2017.
This is confirmed by another CAG report submitted in 2017.
It said that Rs 276 crore had been spent on the project by March 2016 but the project was not yielding intended results for the Ordnance board.
While inaugurating the manufacturing unit of AK 203, Prime Minister Modi in his speech on Sunday has rightly said that even after laying the foundation stone in 2007 the factory failed to manufacture advanced rifles for so many years.
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