PANJIM: All India Congress Committee (AICC) on Monday accused the former Defence Minister and present State Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar of keeping silent on the controversial Rafale deal while stating that he was aware of the violations in norms of purchase of the aircraft.
Addressing the media, AICC National spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi said, “When Rafale deal was signed, the current Chief Minister of Goa was the Defence Minister of India and he wasn’t even present in France. Forget presence, Parrikar had not even been prepared for the Prime Minister’s announcement, and was caught off guard.”
She added, “A Defence Minister who knows the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) norms are bypassed, transfer of technology benefits are not coming to my country and who knows that Defence procurement procedure was not followed, who knows the self interest was served rather than our nation’s interests, continues to maintain a silence, and should answer the questions.”
She further said that silence is also a conspiracy and a tacit agreement to what has betrayed the nation. “The nation saw how the current CM of Goa continued to hide answers on Rafale. It is a known fact that he himself was not preparing for it and was caught off guard,” she added.
The AICC spokesperson said that the original tender was invited by the UPA-Congress led government and the two fighter aircrafts were found equal on all technical fronts that are Rafale and Euro fighter Typhoon.
“In the financial bid, Rafale became L1. Eurofighter Typhoon admittedly wrote a letter dated July 4, 2014 to the then Defence Minister offering to reduce the price by 20 per cent,” Chaturvedi said.
Congress further questioned as to why Prime Minister Narendra Modi had decided to make a fresh purchase and what was the reason that Rafale and Eurofighter Typhoon were not asked to bid afresh so as to arrive at the lowest price in favour of public interest.
“There is a conspiracy of silence to hide the investigation or to take responsibility to carry out an investigation in a very open and shut case of how you can help your own people and bypass national interests. I don’t call Rafale, a deal, it is a scam and what the government is doing and how it is trying to defend itself is nothing but a sham,” the AICC spokesperson said.
Chaturvedi further alleged that the government has made self-interest as its primary goal over national interest. The government overpriced the aircraft purchase, reduced the number of aircraft, took the offset benefit away from a public sector company and handed it over to a friendly private company.
