Our Bureau
The Congress on Monday fielded former Union Minister and veteran leader, S Jaipal Reddy, to mount a fresh offensive on the Prime Minister Narendra Modi for ignoring due procedure, national security, escalating prices and causing loss to public exchequer, to benefit industrialist, Anil Ambani, in the Rafale fighter jet purchase deal.
Using colourful invective, the Congress leader said neither the Defence Minister, Manohar Parrikar, nor the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) or even the Indian Air Force were kept informed when the PM went to France in April 2015 and signed the Rafale deal with the French President, Emmanuel Macron.
“The PM decided to do away with the procedure, the price negotiation committee was not consulted, the CCS was not consulted and we don’t know whether the Air Force was asked. The PM behaved like a medieval monarch; it was almost like the spirit of Louis XIV had entered his soul and pronounced, like the medieval king, that “I am the State”. Like Louis XIV, he is also ignoring the Opposition and maintaining grave guilty silence on this subject. But he is making a mistake if thinks that this contract will vanish from public memory if he stays silent. This is a protest against the imperious manner in which the PM is functioning,” said Jaipal Reddy.
Reddy said questions have been raised in Parliament and by public intellectuals and the Opposition and the Congress, but the PM has maintained a silence and let “lightweights” in his Cabinet do the talking.
He said Rafale is a “direct deal between the PM and Anil Ambani”.
‘Sacrificing HAL’
“This is a bonanza for Anil Ambani who has credentials as a spectacularly failed industrialist. At the altar of this deal, about which no one knew except Ambani because he formed a company to manufacture the offsets just 12 days before the contract was signed, the public sector Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has been sacrificed. National security has been compromised because the Air Force needed 126 aircrafts and only 36 aircrafts have been bought. They will be delivered not in three years. Now they will be delivered in 8.5 years and so the argument cited for emergency purchase gets defeated. The PM has simply no ground to stand on,” said Reddy.
Reddy said the total price of 36 aircraft is about ₹61,000 crore, which works out to be ₹1,660 crore per plane. This is more than double the price of the aircraft under the original 126 medium multi-role combat aircrafts (MMRCA) and almost ₹1,000 crore higher per aircraft than the price that was furnished by the Government itself to Parliament on November 18, 2016. He said 50 per cent of the total cost of the aircraft comprises offsets which benefit Ambani.
“Just 12 days before the new deal was signed, two companies were incorporated. Within days of these companies getting incorporated, on April 10, 2015, the PM announced that India would be going in for 36 Rafales in ‘fly-away’ condition. The Defence Minister later says that he ‘backs the PM’. This is a strange government where ministers back the PM. Generally, it is the PM who backs his ministers,” he said.
Not taken into confidence
“Therefore, I am contending in a responsible way; , Mr Anil Ambani could have only known the secret only through his conversation with the PM. This was a direct deal between Modi and Anil Ambani. He was taken into confidence, whereas the Foreign Secretary, and the Defence Minister werewas not taken into confidence. It is a brazen and gargantuan contract. It is brazen because none of the procedures prescribed under the Defence procurement procedures hashave been followed.
“Look at the figures; the difference between the price secured by UPA and that negotiated now for 36 aircraft would come to ₹41,000 crore. Reliance says offset obligation would be fulfilled by them. Of the total cost of ₹61,000 crore, 50 per cent is offset. Let the government explain what offset contract means in this context under direct or indirect obligations,” said Reddy.