‘Rafale falsehood repeated’
NEW DELHI: In a stinging indictment of the government, two former ministers Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha on Wednesday hit out at the Rs. 58,000 deal with France for 36 Rafale fighter jets signed in 2016, calling the deal “a textbook case of criminal misconduct” and demanding a forensic audit of the entire deal by the government’s top auditor.
Hours later union minister Arun Jaitley hit back at the duo calling it another attempt at maligning the Government by spreading falsehood and paddling fabricated facts regarding the 2016 Inter-governmental Agreement for the procurement of Rafale fighter aircraft.
“It is even more reprehensible that this fresh attempt to tarnish the image of the Government should come less than two weeks after the miserable failure of a similar effort in the Parliament. There is not a grain of truth in the wild allegations repeated today nor anything substantiating in the purported facts and voluminous documents marshalled to corroborate the baseless accusations. “Meanwhile, those raising alarm about the alleged danger to national security ought to realise their responsibility and refrain from politicising for narrow individual ends those very matters pertaining to the defence of the nation that was consistently ignored by them and by those with whom they sympathise,” Jaitley said in a post.
In a related development, Rajesh Dhingra, the chief executive officer of Reliance Defence and Aerospace, called the effort to link Dassault’s decision to select his company over the public sector Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd “a deliberate attempt to mislead.”
NEW DELHI: Launching a frontal attack on Narendra Modi-led NDA government over controversial Rafale fighter jet deal with France, former BJP ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie along with senior Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan on Wednesday demanded a forensic audit by CAG within a stipulated time period of three months.
Addressing a press conference here, former Finance and External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha said, “There is a demand from the Congress party that there should be a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) which should examine this deal. We know that this Lok Sabha is in its last days, so the JPC will never function… I would suggest the audit which the CAG was supposed to take up, it should be a forensic audit and it should be completed within three months and the findings should be placed before the nation.”
Senior Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan alleged that Prime Minister Modi was involved directly in the criminal misconduct and claimed that undue favour was given to businessman Anil Ambani.
Ambani’s firm Reliance Defence Ltd was chosen as offset partner by France-based Dassault Aviation, which manufactures Rafale fighter jets.
“The Rafale deal is not only the biggest defence scam of all time, but the manner in which Mr. Modi abused his position to give undue benefit to Rafale and Anil Ambani has caused a loss of over Rs 35,000 crore to the exchequer. It is a textbook case of criminal misconduct under Prevention of Corruption Act,’’ alleged Bhushan.
“Rafale is a massive scandal which jeopardises national security. If it was a new deal, it required fresh tendering. PM Modi’s own core team did not know what was happening,” said Mr Shourie, veteran journalist and former Telecom and Disinvestment minister in the Vajpayee government. “Bofors was nothing compared to Rafale, I can tell you as the person who covered it,’’ he added.
Shourie along with Sinha and Bhushan claimed that Anil Ambani had formed his company only a few days before the deal was signed between India and France. “The company which was “under Rs 8,000 crore in debt and had no experience in making aircraft” was given the contract rather than Hindustan Aeronautical Limited (HAL),” they said.
While participating in the debate on no-confidence motion against the NDA government in the Lok Sabha recently, Congress President Rahul Gandhi had alleged scam in government-to-government deal for acquiring 36 Rafale fighters from France.