BENGALURU: In his bid to deem Rafale deal a scam, former union minister and senior Congress leader Veerappa Moily ended up referring to Bofors deal as a scam too, albeit a smaller one.While many political analysts have called Rafale the BJP’s Bofors moment, such comparison being made by Moily comes as an embarrassment to the Congress that is pinning its hopes on controversies around Rafale deal as a potential poll agenda in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls.
Moily was criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his involvement in alleged illegalities in the multi-crore deal when he compared it to Bofors, calling both deals a scam. Congress mouthpiece National Herald had come under severe criticism for drawing a similar comparison between the two deals.
“The PM is bringing disrepute to the nation. He is lying continuously and each of those lies are being exposed one by one. Bofors was a mere Rs 60 crore scam but this (Rafale) is a direct scam of Rs 58,000 crore,” Moily told reporters in Chikkaballapur. He alleged that the money from the purported scam was being used to fill up BJP and Amit Shah’s treasury ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
Moily’s statement comparing the two defence deals essentially acknowledging Bofors — where former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s name features prominently — as a scam is defeating the party’s purpose to accuse BJP of corruption over Rafale deal.