Janjivan Bureau / New Delhi : Determined to prove that the Rafale deal was a scam, the Congress top brass on Monday petitioned the Central Vigilance Commission demanding an inquiry into the deal under the anti-graft provisions of the law.
Barely four days after meeting the CAG on the matter, the top Congress brass on Monday met the CVC alleging Rs 41,000 crore loss to the public exchequer on account of the government favouring a private industrialist for the offset contract under the deal with French jet maker Dassault Aviation.
The Congress memorandum said it was petitioning against the “loss to exchequer, endangering of national security, rampant corruption, conspiratorial by-passing of PSU Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, illegal and undue benefit to crony friends, violation of mandatory provisions of Defence Procurement Procedure in the unilateral purchase of 36 Rafale Jets from Dassault Aviation in India’s biggest defence contract worth 60,150 crore”.
The delegation comprising Ghulam Nabi Azad, Ahmed Patel, Anand Sharma, Jairam Ramesh, Randeep Surjewala and Manish Tewari among others said the Rafale scam had now emerged as India’s biggest defence scam and tracks of corruption were getting unravelled by the day with repeated disclosures and zero answers from the government.
“The Government of India is unforgivably guilty of compromising causing loss by a conspiracy to the public exchequer worth 41,205 crore. Deliberate loss caused as also denial of a contract worth over Rs 30,000 crore to HAL is writ large. The deliberate enrichment of a private entity, Reliance Defence at the cost of HAL, by award of a Rs 30,000 crore‘Offset Contract’, as also 1,00,000 crore ‘Life Cycle Contract’ without any tender and without following any mandatory requirement of the Defence Procurement Procedure itself tells a story of stark crony capitalism that needs to be investigated,” the memorandum said.
The Congress leaders interestingly quoted a French media website report on former French President Francois Hollande claiming that France had no choice in the offset deal and was given only the name of Anil Ambani-led Reliance Defence in the matter.
Accusing the government of violating DPP and the PM of unilateral reduction in the number of jets from 126 (under UPA deal to 36) and undue benefit to Ambani, the Congress delegation has demanded a time-bound inquiry.
“As per law, the government is bound to provide full information to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), entire deal, its contours, nature of contract, absence of favoritism, corruption, crony capitalism, violation of law and procedures and the principles of level-playing field are part of CVC’s domain to examine and to return a finding.
The government is bound to disclose the price of 36 aircraft to scrutiny by CVC, in light of the serious allegations of corruption and loss of money to public exchequer.
We, therefore, request the CVC to undertake its statutory duty by examining record threadbare, so that corruption, crony capitalism, violation of law and procedure and loss to public exchequer is brought out as the earliest,” the Congress memorandum says.
Before the Congress delegation met the CVC, party chief Rahul Gandhi tweeted a link of the French website claiming Hollande told them that France was given no offset option but Ambani.
