A Congress delegation called on the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on Thursday, a second such meeting in less than a month, to press for a forensic audit of the “₹60,150 crore Rafale deal” and bring all facts on record for Parliament to fix “accountability” in the alleged scam.
A a fresh memorandum submitted by the party included press clippings: of the former French President Francois Hollande’s interview, in which he had claimed that the Indian government had pushed for Anil Ambani-led Reliance as an offset partner to the Rafale manufacturer, Dassault Aviation; the dissent note of a senior Defence Ministry official objecting to the pricing; and the former Hindustan Aeronautic Ltd. (HAL) chief, T. S. Raju’s comments claiming that HAL had entered into a work share contract with Dassault.
Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma also accused “the ministers in the government of leaking information” to sections of the media claiming that the CAG would be giving a ‘clean chit’ to the government. Mr. Sharma said such leaks eroded the integrity of the constitutional authority and added that “more revelations are going to come up since this is a global tender.”
The Congress delegation included Ahmed Patel, Anand Sharma, Jairam Ramesh, Randeep Surjewala, RPN Singh and Vivek Tankha.
On September 19, a party delegation had met the CAG to request for a forensic audit. The Congress said that subsequent revelations and documents had “exposed a deep-rooted, sinister conspiracy and a clear-cut case of loss to the public exchequer.”
In its memorandum, the opposition party said: “The Rafale scam has now emerged as India’s biggest ‘defence scam’. Skeletons are tumbling out of the closet everyday with repeated disclosures getting zero answers from the Defence Ministry. In fact, the only ‘truth’ of this government is ‘subterfuge’. The stench of ‘corruption’ and ‘cronyism’ in the Rafale deal is nauseating, requiring urgent intervention.”
The party alleged that the government’s decision to buy 36 ‘Made in France’ Rafale aircraft without ‘transfer of technology’ had caused a loss to the public exchequer worth ₹41,205 crore.
“The above facts reflect a clear-cut case of loss to public exchequer and rampant corruption coupled with a concerted conspiracy of bypassing PSU, HAL. It also reveals illegal and undue benefit to ‘crony friends’ by the highest echelons of power in the Modi Government,” it said.
The party told the CAG that all the aspects of conspiracy, corruption, national security and crony capitalism could only be uncovered through a probe by a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC).
Mr. Sharma said the Congress would not just demand, but insist on a JPC so that “accountability can be fixed once the CAG report puts all documents on record.”
