Adding fuel to the ongoing controversy Rafale, Former French President Hollande, in an interview to a media house stated that Dassault Aviation was given no choice but to partner with Ambani-led Reliance Defence for the offset clause in the Rafale fighter jet deal.
With this, the Rafale deal is proving to be an albatross around Central Govt’s neck. We have also seen the media briefing on this controversial deal, in New Delhi, few days ago, by Yeshwant Sinha and Arun Shourie -- both former Ministers in Vajpayee cabinet. And senior Advocate, Prashant Bhushan, have made certain startling revelations about the manner in which earlier UPA’s negotiations, at an advanced stage for 126 Rafale fighter jets was suddenly changed by settling for 36 fighters only. This they alleged, was in gross violation of mandatory procedures including bypassing the Cabinet Committee on Security. The purported documents in support, released by them do lend considerable credence to their charges.
BJP has been arguing that UPA Govt. inordinately delayed, the urgent need of fighter aircraft and it was Modi who completed the deal in jiffy when first aircraft itself was to be delivered only September 2019. When the questions were raised by Congress, the BJP leaders and Ministers gave contradicting answers in particular with regard to price per aircraft so much so that one of RSS supporters Mr Nigam, went on to claim that if government disclosed the price, the entire India-specific details would get revealed at the click of button through Google. Subsequently BJP started responding with a counter on Bofors deal, which is a dead issue in spite of BJP Govt's attempt to implicate Rajiv Gandhi. Also unable to give suitable answers BJP attempted to use Bollywood Actress Pallavi Joshi to simply explain the deal.
Keeping all these things in view the trio, Sinha, Shourie, Bhushan, had come down heavily for inexplicable dropping from the project of a government owned HAL which had already entered into (by then UPA) working share agreement with Dassault Aviation according to which 70 percent of the work on 108 planes were to be done in India. Instead, a company with no past experience in the field of aerospace manufacturing, and incorporated barely days before India-France Joint statement issued on 10/4/15, has been assigned 70 percent of offset benefits worth 210 billion, apparently in flagrant violation of Defence offset guidelines that require approval by Defence Minister,
In fact the easing out of HAL made a mockery of oft-repeated “make in India” slogan. The said joint statement had unequivocally stated that “ the aircraft and associated systems and weapons would be delivered on same configuration as had been tested and approved by Indian Air Force.” Then why such a huge price differentials?
While the Trio had described the deal as major scandal amounting to misuse of office and criminal misconduct, and places enormous additional burden on the national exchequer. Is there something more than what meets the eye? If the recent claim that the deal finalised now is much cheaper, the government should come out with time line starting from 2001 to give clear picture to the people of this country whose taxes are used to make such big purchases.
