Report fails to include dissent note, says Rahul

New Delhi, Feb. 13: Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday cited a purported “dissent note” by some officials who negotiated the Rafale deal to assert that it demolishes Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claim of better pricing and faster delivery of the jets, and dismissed the CAG report on the multi-billion pact as a “coverup” that was “not worth the paper” it was written on.

Stepping up his attack on the government within hours of the muchawaited the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report on the contentious jet deal being tabled in Parliament, the Congress chief accused the Modi government of “lying”.

Mr Gandhi, at a press conference, said that even though he does not agree with the CAG’s submission that the deal was 2.86 per cent cheaper than the UPA-era offer, but it “calls the bluff” of Mr Modi, then finance minister Arun Jaitley and defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman who “had lied to Parliament by stating that the price of the ‘new deal’ was 9-20 per cent lower”.

The report said the Rafale deal signed by the Modi government to procure 36 fighter jets from France’s Dassault got 2.86 per cent cheaper price than what was negotiated during the previous UPA regime in 2007.

According to Mr Gandhi, the dissent note said that Dassault Aviation would take at least 10 years to complete its present backlog of Rafale aircraft.

He also quoted the note as saying that the final price offered by the French government, which is escalation-based, was 55.6 per cent above the benchmark price. “There is only one reason the new deal has been carried out and that is to give Mr Anil Ambani `30,000 crore,” he said.

A CAG report that does not mention the dissent the negotiating team itself made on price, on timing, I don’t think it is worth the paper

— RAHUL GANDHI,

Congress president