Terming the Rafale fighter jet deal as the biggest Defence scam, BJP rebels Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha along with eminent lawyer Prashant Bhushan on Wednesday targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for alleged wrongdoing in the contract and demanded a forensic Comptroller and Auditor General(CAG) audit in a time-bound manner of three months to unravel the facts of the deal worth over 7 billion Euros.
The trio also claimed the scam amounted to more than Rs 30,000 crore and it was “text book case of criminal misconduct” impacting national security and loss to public exchequer. They also questioned the decision to award offset contract to Reliance, which according to them has little experience in this field. Moreover, this company was selected ignoring public sector Hindustan Aeronautics limited (HAl) having vast experience in aircraft manufacturing.
Also, HAl was to build the Rafales as per the earlier proposed deal initiated by the UPA regime for 126 medium multi-role aircraft(MMRCA). According to that deal, 18 jets were to be bought off the shelf and the remaining jets were be manufactured by HAl through transfer of technology pact.
Alleging that the defence ministry officials as well as ministers were not aware of the decision to buy 36 Rafales from France, they said in a news conference here Modi unilaterally decided to do so and announced the same in a joint statement with the French President during his visit to Paris in 2015. Shourie said even the then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar was not privy to the decision to cancel the earlier deal and opt for a Government to Government deal for 36 jets to be bought off the shelf.
Then Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said on April 8, 2015 just two days before the announcement of the new deal that the negotiations for the 126-jet were on between Dassault, defence ministry and HAl, Shourie said adding Dassault chief also said the same thing days before Paris statement.
Claiming that the Bofors scam was nothing as compared to the Rafale controversy, Sinha said the Cabinet Committee on Security(CCS) has to take a decision first scrap the old deal and then approve the new deal. However, it was not done and the CCS approval was accorded one year after Modi announced the deal in Paris, he said.
As regards the offset controversy, Bhushan said the defence ministry policy clearly states that the Defence Minister has to approve all offsets regardless of the price. However, the Government maintains that Dassault is free to have a partner for offsets, that is, Reliance, he said adding it is in clear violation of the offset policy.
As per the contract, Dassault has to plough back 50 per cent of the deal price worth over Rs 60,000 crore into Indian defence industry to give a boost to local units to get hold of world class technology and know how.
Meanwhile, the trio also criticised the Government for not disclosing the price of every jet referring to secrecy clause signed between India and France. Shourie said the clause pertained to technical parameters and weapon
systems but not about the price.
He claimed the price of every jet was more than Rs 1,600 crore which is at least Rs 1,000 crore more than the official figure quoted by the government in Parliament in 2016 where it said every Rafale with weapons and other systems included is about Rs 670 crore.