New Delhi: A French media report claimed that the aviation company Dassault had no option but to select Anil Ambani’s aviation company for joint venture as a “mandatory” trade-off to get the Rafale deal. And just hours after the report, Congress Chief Rahul Gandhi declared that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi “is corrupt” and is the Prime Minister of Anil Ambani only.

The report was made by Media port which said that a top Dassault official, namely Loik Segalen, had given an explanation to his staff at a presentation held last year that the joint venture with Reliance Defence was “imperative and obligatory for Dassault Aviation, to accept this condition, in order to obtain the export contract for Rafale from India”.

“It is absolutely clear that the prime minister is corrupt. I repeat, the prime minister of India is a corrupt man… and sadly, his entire campaign was on fighting corruption,” Rahul Gandhi said during a press conference in the Congress office.

“He is actually not your prime minister. He is Anil Ambani’s prime minister.”

The Congress chief also found some fishy in the visit by Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to France amid the ongoing huge political controversy at here.

“Now you see the defence minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, suddenly leaving for France… that too to visit Dassault… One wonders what the emergency is,” he questioned.

Mr. Gandhi claimed that the defence minister had gone there to “put pressure” on Dassault. “And let me make one more thing very clear… Dassault is sitting on a massive contract… It will obviously say whatever the Indian government wants it to say. But look at the internal documentation in Dassault… that makes it clear as to what had happened”,” he claimed.

The report article by Mediapart helps in providing reinforcement to the explosive statement made by former French president Francois Hollande last month which clarified that France was not availed of any choice except to select one and only company from India and that was Anil Ambani’s rookie defence company for offset clause. Along with that the deal also made a compelling measure that business worth of at least half the deal’s worth of Rs. 30,000 crore be generated in India. At that time too Dassault said that the decision was taken by it on its own without any force from the Indian side.

Mediapart stood by its latest report. “These are minutes of a meeting held on May 11, 2017 within the office of Dassault Aviation company which fully confirms the statement of Mr. Hollande on the choice or the imposition of Reliance Group as Dassault’s partner for the Rafale contract,” Antonn Rouget, a journalist with Mediapart, told New Agencies in Paris.

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