Indore: Taking the Rafale fighter jet deal issue to a new height, senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal on Sunday claimed that the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not have any explanations over the transactions for the deal and said that the party would wait for acquiring required documents before taking the issue to the court.
The Congress party is putting its efforts to attack the government of NDA over the issue of its deal with Dassault Aviation to by 36 fighter aircraft, by claiming that the payment being made for each aircraft is about three times higher in comparison to the deal signed by the earlier UPA government.
“The Rafale deal is a big scam to which the Modi government does not have any answer. This deal was struck overlooking the provisions of the Aircraft Procurement Policy.
“The External Affairs and Defence ministries were not taken into consideration before inking the deal,” Mr. Sibal told reporters.
Answering to a question inquiring the reason about why Congress party was not taking the issue to the court despite having noted lawyers like himself and former Union Minister P Chidambaram, Mr. Sibal said, “We won’t move the court until we get necessary documents in the case.”
Getting into the details about the reason why the party raised objections for the deal, Sibal said that the UPA government under Congress party had inked a deal 2012 to buy the aircraft at the price of Rs. 560 crore each.
He further claimed that the present BJP-led government junked this deal and signed another new deal in 2016 in which the price fixed for each of the French-built aircraft was Rs. 1,600 crore.
“We are not seeking information on the technology used to manufacture the aircraft. We just want to know on what basis the NDA government inked the deal to buy the aircraft at three times its 2012 cost,” Mr. Sibal said.
Echoing Congress chief Rahul Gandhi’s demand to probe the Rafale deal through a Joint Parliamentary Committee, Mr. Sibal too sought for such a probe.
When inquired whether the BJP was trying to hit back at the Congress party by raking up the Bofors deal of the 1980s, Mr. Sibal called such leaders from the ruling party as “big liars”.
“Has anything happened in Bofors deal yet? The court has acquitted the people. But we will see how these people come out clean of the Rafale deal accusations after 2019,” Mr. Sibal said.
Responding to a query over the issue of FIR registry against Rober Vadra, who is brother in law of party president Rahul Gandhi, and former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, over alleged irregularities in a land deal in Gurugram area, Sibal said, “We already knew that as the countdown to the 2019 general polls begins, such cases (against us) would rise.”
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