Modi scores moral win after poll loss

new delhi — India’s top court rejected petitions on Friday seeking an investigation of fighter jet deal worth about $8.7 billion with France’s Dassault Aviation, handing a political victory to the ruling party months before a general election.

The ruling is a setback for the opposition Congress party, which had accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of corruption in the deal to buy 36 Rafale planes from France and a decision to pick Reliance Defence as a domestic partner.

Reliance, owned by billionaire Anil Ambani, has no aeronautical expertise and was chosen ahead of state-run Hindustan Aeronautics, which has a history of making planes. Dassault said in October it picked Reliance as a partner on its own, countering a French online media report that said the Indian government insisted on the firm as a condition of the contract.

The petitioners, two former ministers of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and an activist lawyer, had argued that the escalating price of the deal should be investigated. “We don’t find any material to show that it’s commercial favouritism,” Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said while delivering the court’s ruling.

“It’s not proper for the court to examine each aspect of this case. It isn’t a job of the court to compare pricing details,” he said.

The Congress used the issue to put pressure on Modi in recent state elections and ahead of a general election due by May. The BJP lost power in three heartland rural states in results announced this week.

The BJP-led government and Reliance have said the charges are baseless.

Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma told reporters the party did not agree with the court ruling and demanded a parliamentary investigation into what he called an “arbitrary deal”.

Finance Minister Arjun Jaitley rejected the demand from the Congress party saying any investigation by a political body would be “partisan”. —

NEW DELHI — Seeking to counter the BJP attack, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday accused the government of telling “lies” and raised questions over the statement that a parliamentary committee had examined the pricing details of the Rafale deal and asserted that there was no such meeting.

Addressing a press conference after a battery of BJP leaders demanded his apology for his campaign against the government on the issue, he maintained an aggressive posture attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi and persisted with demand for a JPC which, he said, will expose the “lies”.

Citing the Supreme Court judgement that referred to a parliamentary committee having examined the price details of the fighter jet, he said no such meeting was held.

“Today Supreme Court gave a judgement and I want to read three lines from it. ‘The pricing details have, however, been shared with the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and the report of the CAG has been examined by the Public Accounts Committee

Now the govt should tell us where is this CAG report. Show it to us and to the PAC chairman. Or probably there is some other PAC in some other Parliament Rahul Gandhi, Congress president

(PAC).’ This is the foundation of the judgment,” Gandhi said. Party leader Mallikarjun Kharge, the PAC Chairman who was at the press conference, said no such report came before the panel and the CAG was also not aware of it.

“I asked the Deputy CAG today how it happened. Did someone forge my signatures? If the report is not with CAG, it cannot be with PAC. PAC presents its report to Parliament which I have not done. And it comes into public domain through Parliament,. How did it come, who gave it? The rules say that till the report is presented in Parliament, no one can speak on it,” Kharge said.

“How did it happen. It is really surprising. PAC has been dragged into it,” he added.

Gandhi said questions were rising after the Supreme Court judgment, which was the basic foundation of the BJP’s argument.

“The report was not seen in the PAC, but it was seen by the Supreme Court. I cannot understand this. Because when you say a lie, then it comes out somewhere.

“Now the government should tell us where is this CAG report. Show it to us and to the PAC chairman. Or probably there is some other PAC in some other Parliament. I don’t know. This is possible in the 21st century that Modiji has his own PAC in the PMO. —