Chairman of The Hindu Publishing group, N Ram on Friday, January 18 said the Modi government did a cover up after they changed the Rafale deal agreement from 126 aircrafts to 36. The former Editor-in-Chief made the statement during an interview with Asiaville, after his exposé on the deal in The Hindu created a stir.
“Modi government did a cover up. Now, look at this, they were negotiating a deal for 126, 18 flyway aircraft, straightaway for India and 108 to the manufacturer at HAL in Bengaluru. Now, suddenly new deal comes in the April of 2015. Prime Minister Modi visits France and out of the blue, there is an announcement through joint Indo-French joint statement. There is a certain announcement — that we are going to buy 36… India is going to buy 36 flyway aircraft and this was going to be through an intercontinental deal, not through a commercial contract,” N Ram said.
He said that the deal was a “massive gift” to French company Dassault from the Indian government. “If you do a simple arithmetic, the price for aircraft multiplies three times and the Air Force doesn’t get the number of aircrafts it wanted… So, this huge cost of 1.3 Billion Euros was imposed on 36 aircrafts rather than 126. As Mr Chidambaram, the former finance minister has commented, he said this is a huge gift to Dassault from the Government of India and they will be walking all the way to the bank because look at the cost that would have been realised over many years was realised over some months. It’s a huge thing in financial terms. So, it’s a massive gift from the government of India to the manufacturer of Rafale,” the editor said.
Drawing a connection with Bofors, N Ram added that the decision making in both the cases (Bofors and Rafale) were arbitrary. “The professionals were ignored or overruled in this (Rafale) case,” he said.
He further said, “The trail has not been discovered yet, although corruption has been alleged by the Congress party and also in the petition that was sent to the Supreme Court by Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and Prashant Bhushan. So, this investigation will continue. There are strange things. The crony-capitalism in the choice of offset partners. The price was arbitrarily raised without any explanation.”
N Ram pointed out that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government ignored a “mouth watering” Eurofighter Typhoon deal and questioned why the government did not accept the offer. “There was a real opportunity to get strong leverage because Eurofighter Typhoon, which comprises leading Aeronautical and Defence companies from four countries Germany, United Kingdom, Italy and Spain, which was represented by Air Bus… and in July of 2014 the person from Air Bus wrote a letter to then defence minister Arun Jaitley with a very attractive offer, what I call a mouth watering offer, that 20 per cent discount on what they had bid for earlier and accelerated delivery by diverting deliverables that was supposed to go to Germany, UK, Italy and Spain. Then they (Eurofighter) said we will set up a production line quickly in India, an industrial park and provide support and training. And that was a very good outline of an offer. Why was it not made use of?” he asked.
Watch the full interview here:
https://youtu.be/kVhd3tZmFDQ
Also Read: Crystal Clear Now That Modi Hurried Rafale Deal To Benefit Crony Businessman: Sitaram Yechury