Hardeep Puri on Rahul Gandhi's Epstein Link Charge With India-US Trade Deal: 'Never Heard More Utter Gibberish' | Exclusive

New Delhi: Union Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said he has never heard any "bigger utter gibberish" than what Rahul Gandhi is saying by alleging that India gave up its autonomy in the trade deal with the United States because some names were mentioned in The Epstein Files. Mentioning that this trade deal (India-US) is merely a framework of an interim agreement and more work needs to be done, Puri dismissed charges leveled by Rahul Gandhi and others in the opposition that some core Indian interests have been compromised.In an exclusive conversation with Times Now Group Editor-in-Chief Navika Kumar on Frankly Speaking, Hardeep Singh Puri when asked to respond on Rahul Gandhi’s allegations over India-US trade deal linking it with the Epstein files,

the Union Minister said, "you are addressing one of the most colorful characters that Indian politics has produced since 1947 and his name is Rahul Gandhi."Elaborating his response, Puri said, "Somewhere I think he was enrolled in an educational institute, maybe for security reasons, and he was then called Rahul Vinci. Now, Rahul Gandhi is capable of something that you and I can only imagine.”

"It is called intellectual hop, step, and jump. That is, you start with a proposition here, hop, step, and jump, and you run, you step here, do a long jump, and then you jump. He's able to link things in his own mind, and I suggested in a press conference yesterday that whilst popular imagery, what is called a choke, there is another thing,” the Union Minister said. Continuing further, the Union Minister said, "Sometimes you set out to choke somebody else, you got choked yourself. It's not that somebody else has applied the choke. He was implying yesterday that another foreign country has applied a choke on us as a result of which the trade deal is no good, so and so, first check the facts.”

Reciprocity Should Be The Cornerstone, Hardeep Puri on India's Recent Trade Deals

Further commenting on the allegations leveled by Leader of Opposition (LoP) in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi over India-US trade deal, Hardeep Singh Puri said, "What has happened in the trade deal? It's a very difficult world. The new administration there went around imposing high tariffs on a large number of countries. They believe, and I'm not going to comment on that, that reciprocity should be the cornerstone."“Normally in the WTO or the GATT before that, you negotiate deals on the basis of what is advantageous. Anyway, from there, we ended up with 50% of tariffs. Today, it's been an excellent trade deal," the Union Minister said. "I think it's been clarified on the ground, and I can tell you with my understanding of what the issues are, and I think Kiran Rijiju put it very well, ‘koi abhi Mykalal paida nahi hua’, who can say that the Prime Minister has sold out. Look, a trade negotiation is give and take, and India has done very well. I saw an interview with Jeffrey Sachs," Puri added."He (Sachs) said, it is the other side, India has done very well, of course, more work needs to be done insofar as linking the trade deal with things that 11, 12 years ago, I think, I don't know when that person whose files are there, he died, I think he died in 2019 or something, today it's 2026. What the link is, he's seeming to suggest that X, Y, they figure somehow, and somebody has a case somewhere, and therefore, we have surrendered our autonomy. I mean, I've never heard bigger, utter gibberish than this,” the Union Minister said.Giving an overview of how the India economy was shaping on the course of some recent trade deal announced, Hardeep Singh Puri said, “Following on the heels of the India-EU, 27 countries, before that came the EFTA, before that came Australia, so here is an economy, 50% of its GDP is in the external sector, is guarding one trade deal after the last.”