CHENNAI: Hours after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s ‘circumstances don’t lie’ remark questioning former French president Francois Hollande’s statements on the Rafale deal, Supreme Court lawyer and Swaraj Abhiyan president Prashant Bhushan said on Sunday that Hollande’s statements only support what the circumstances had already revealed.
At a press meet, organised by Chennai-based NGO Arappor Iyakkam, the senior lawyer said the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) stated that no offset contract may be awarded without the approval of the Defence Minister which proved that the Modi government’s repeated claims that it had nothing to do in the selection of Reliance Defence as the offset partner, had no truth.
Demanding formation of a Joint Parliamentary Committee to probe the government’s involvement to bring in Reliance Defence, then a 15-day old company with no track record in defence manufacturing, he said, “This is in many ways larger than the Bofors scam because this compromises national security.”
He added that the Reliance group was already steeped in debts and was charge sheeted in the 2G scam (all the accused were later acquitted by a trial court).
Bringing it on board was to give it ‘undue benefit’ in the form of thousands of crores of rupees at the expense of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).
He went on to say that Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s claims that the decision to procure 36 aircraft, instead of the 126 in the original deal, was because of the Indian Air Force’s lack of infrastructure to park and maintain 126 aircraft, was ‘ridiculous.’
On the government’s argument that the price of the deal could not be disclosed due to secrecy agreement of 2008, he said, “The government should reveal the details now since the French government has said that it has no objections to the deal being revealed.”
Bhushan also stressed on how every institution established to stop corruption had been weakened internally in the country.
Anti-corruption slogans raised
Volunteers in white carrying large placards with phrases like “Amend the Lokayukta Act”, “Recover the loss from corruption”, and “Publish all tender details online” greeted the 300-odd people on Sunday at Kutchery Road at Mylapore who had gathered for a public meeting ‘Enga Saar Unga Sattam’ organised by Arappor Iyakkam