New Delhi
\nTwo former Union Cabinet Ministers and a prominent lawyer on Wednesday termed the Rafale fighter jet purchase as the biggest scam of the country and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of criminal misconduct in handling the deal.<\/p>\n
They asked who allowed a joint venture between Rafale manufacturers (Dassault aviation of France) and Reliance Defence Limited of India, since it was to be okayed by the Ministry of Defence.<\/p>\n
Former Ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie were accompanied by lawyer Prashant Bhushan at a press conference. \u201cIt\u2019s a compromise on national security as the number of planes has been reduced from 126 to 36 without nobody in IAF or the Ministry of Defence asking it,\u201d Bhushan said.<\/p>\n
Shourie questioned the claim that the Rafales being purchased from France had \u201cIndia-specific\u201d upgrades. He cited the India-France joint statement of April 2015 that said \u201cthe Aircraft and associated systems and weapons would be delivered on the same configuration as had been tested and approved by the IAF.\u201d There is nothing India-specific, he said.<\/p>\n
On Dassault partnering with Anil Ambani-headed Reliance Defence Limited of India, Shourie asked how Hindustan Aeronautics Limited was overlooked and Ambani\u2019s firm allowed despite having zero experience in aero space.<\/p>\n
In the evening, Reliance Defence and Aerospace CEO Rajesh K Dhingra said in statement: \u201cAll 36 aircraft are to be delivered in \u2018fly-away\u2019 condition, to be manufactured in France by Dassault and exported to India, how is the question of experience in making aircraft relevant here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shourie questioned the government claims that Dassault and Reliance were free to enter into a partnership. He cited the government\u2019s \u201coffset guidelines\u201d that say all partnerships have to be cleared by the government itself. \u201cOffset\u201d is the policy under which foreign firms tie up with Indian companies in the military equipment sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi Two former Union Cabinet Ministers and a prominent lawyer on Wednesday termed the Rafale fighter jet purchase as the biggest scam of the country and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of criminal misconduct in handling the deal. They asked who allowed a joint venture between Rafale manufacturers (Dassault aviation of France) and Reliance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38742,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38743,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38741\/revisions\/38743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}