New Delhi, May 5: Reliance Group on Sunday dismissed Congress president Rahul Gandhi's claim that Anil Ambani is "a dishonest businessman and crony capitalist." Gandhi's claims are "patently untrue statements," said a spokesperson of Reliance Group. "Congress party president Rahul Gandhi, in his typical cavalier fashion has continued his campaign of calumny, disinformation, distortion and malicious lies. Yesterday, he singled out our group chairman Anil D Ambani as allegedly a crony capitalist and dishonest businessman -- all obviously patently untrue statements," the spokesperson further said in the statement.

"As is by now, customary for all of Rahul Gandhi's public statements, he 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." Rafale Deal: Rahul Gandhi Mocks Anil Ambani, Says ‘He Will Not be Able to Make Even a Paper Plane’.

Reliance Group spokesperson said: "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 Hon'ble Supreme Court."

"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," said the spokesperson.

"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 Mr Gandhi's own words," the spokesperson said.Gandhi has repeatedly levelled allegations against the BJP government for alleged wrongdoings in the Rafale deal and has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi directly of corruption, which the ruling party has outrightly denied.

The Congress president has alleged that Prime Minister Modi conducted "parallel negotiations" and cancelled the previous deal agreed by the UPA government, and gave Ambani firm's Reliance Defence the offset contract worth Rs 30,000 crore.