If the Rafale deal is honest, why should the Government stand in the way of a JPC probe?
Even as a French judge has been appointed to lead a “highly sensitive” judicial investigation into the charges of alleged corruption and favouritism in the Rs 59,000 crore Rafale fighter jet deal with India, the Opposition parties at home have taken to sharpening their knives to attack the BJP-led Government ahead of the monsoon session of Parliament that gets underway on July 19. Apart from the Congress, whose leaders now claim vindication for having raised the matter much before the French authorities ordered the investigation, the CPI(M) and the Bahujan Samaj Party have also come out into the open to demand a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the matter. BSP supremo Mayawati, the latest to join the “allow-JPC-probe” bandwagon, said on Twitter that the Centre should take cognisance of the alleged “corruption” in the Rafale deal. The French judge will, among other elements, examine questions surrounding the action of former French President Francois Hollande, who was in office when the deal was inked, and current French President Emmanuel Macron, who was at that time Hollande’s Economy and Finance Minister, as well as the then Defence Minister, now Foreign Affairs Minister, Jean Yves Le Drian.
The fighter jet deal had run into the same controversy earlier too when the Opposition parties, chiefly the Congress, claimed that the Narendra Modi Government had purchased the jets at an inflated price. These parties also questioned the Government as to why the offset contract was given to a private firm instead of the public sector Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). However, in 2019, the Supreme Court had put a seal of approval of sorts on the deal when it dismissed a clutch of review petitions that demanded a thorough investigation into the process of the Government’s procurement of the 36 fighter jets from France. At the time, the apex court had ruled that there was no ground to order an FIR into the case. However, now that the French authorities have also stirred into action on the subject, the political parties in India have got fresh fodder to pin the Government down. But one thing is rather befuddling: If the deal is actually honest and not sweet, why doesn’t the Government allow Parliament to set up a JPC and let it probe the matter to the Opposition parties’ heart’s content?