Today's Edit: The Agusta Challenge

Helicopter deal probe mustn't go Bofors way

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said in Parliament on Wednesday that an “invisible hand” had guided action or inaction in the AgustaWestland deal. It's the job of investigating agencies to reveal the ‘invisible hand', and any furious politicking on the issue is going to generate nothing more than heat and dust. While one side will accuse the other of graft, the other will retort that it is willing to be hanged if proven guilty. All of this gets us nowhere. Enough time has been lost, and further failure to seriously probe the wrongdoing in the purchase of the helicopters for VVIP use in high altitude regions, can result in a dead-end, as in the Bofors case. It has already been established that bribes were given by AgustaWestland to Indians to swing the deal; an Italian court has handed out convictions to the donors. What needs to be now established at the Indian end is the identity of the recipients.

It's here that the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate — the two agencies involved in the inquiry — need to shed their old reluctance to get to the bottom of the truth. Certain facts in the public domain show that they had worked in tandem to scuttle the investigations during the second term of the Congress-led UPA Government; while the CBI took nine months to share the First Information Report it had filed in the case with the ED, the latter too did not demonstrate any urgency in getting it. Such feet-dragging meant that no real progress could be made. Weeks before it vacated office, and with a desire to cover its back, the UPA regime showed sudden alacrity and initiated the process of blacklisting the company  though it did not actually blacklist it. It's amusing that the Congress should now be taking the Bharatiya Janata Party-led led NDA Government to task for doing nothing in the matter for two years since the latter assumed power.

While the Congress has a right to demand answers from the Government, there are questions that it should be answering as well. Both Parrikar and BJP Member of Parliament Subramanian Swamy raised important issues in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, and so far the response from the main opposition party has been less than satisfactory and, indeed, designed to deflect attention from the core issue. Former Defence Minister AK Antony’s intervention failed to hide the UPA’s discomfiture.

The Congress cannot get away by saying that its regime had cancelled the deal and ordered a CBI inquiry. It  had had no option but to do that after the scandal broke out in the public domain. Its other actions and inactions, as Parrikar pointed out, hold the key. Nor should the Congress gloat that the Italian court judge, who ordered the convictions, has given a clean chit to its senior-most leaders. He did not; all he said was that he did not have evidence, but that there were traces of the money trail. These traces need to be followed up by the Indian investigators to lead to the mastermind. It is to be hoped that the ongoing interrogation of former Indian Air Force chief SP Tyagi and other alleged accused, such as lawyer Gautam Khaitan, furthers the investigation. It's hard to believe that the massive bribe amounts revealed to have been paid could have gone to just one individual or the Tyagi family.