Modi jeopardizing national security, should be charged for criminal misconduct: Shourie on Rafale

Describing the Rafale deal as a textbook case of ‘criminal misconduct, of misuse of public office and of enriching parties at the expense of national interest and national security’, two former Union ministers, Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, and lawyer activist Prashant Bhushan on Wednesday asked the Union Government to come clean.

Addressing the media in the national capital, they demanded that the Government should disclose all details in national interest.

Pointing out that the Indian Air Force in 2007 had identified the urgent need for 126 fighter planes, they demanded to know how the Government scaled down the supply to only 36 Rafale fighter planes in 2015.

Referring to the then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar disclosing on Door Darshan that the deal for 126 planes would have cost ₹90,000 Crore, the trio asked how the price of ₹60,000 Crore was fixed for 36 planes with specifications remaining the same.

Calling the Government’s bluff on ‘India-specific add-ons’ having pushed up the price, both Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie pointed to the joint statement issued by the Indian and the French Government which clearly stated that the new deal would conform to the ‘same configuration tested and approved by the IAF’.

Asserting that no commercial deal could override the rights of the Indian Parliament and people to be informed of the circumstances that warranted a new deal, they asked why the Government did not call for a fresh tender, especially when Eurofighter, a competitor of Dassault, had offered to reduce the price by 20%.

The Prime Minister’s unilateral Rafale deal (Defence Minister Parrikar had distanced himself by clearly stating that the negotiations were carried out between the Indian Prime Minister and the French President), they asserted

• Had jeopardised national security
• Put an enormous additional burden on the exchequer
• Deprived a ‘national’ company like Hindustan Aeronautics with 60 years of experience in the industry, of the offset contract and
• Benefitted a private company, incorporated 10 days before the deal was announced, with no experience and with several thousand Crores of debt

Prime Minister Modi’s announcement in France on April 10, 2015 was astonishing because:

• There was no explanation for how the numbcr of 36 aircraft had been arrived at;
• There was no mention of any planes that were to be manufactured in India;
• There was no mention of the requirement that the supplier must transfer technology;
• From securing 126 fighters, the Indian Air Force was now to get only 36 fighters-there was nothing about the rest.

In a press release issued at the press conference, the former union ministers and Prashant Bhushan asserted, “AII that was said by Government sources in justification was that the Air Force needed the planes urgently and that these 36 planes would reach India within two years.”

But three years later, the aircrafts are nowhere in sight. It has in fact been announced in Parliament that the first Rafale fighter will come only by September 2019 (four-and-a-half years after the Prime Minister’s announcement). The full pack of 36 aircrafts will not be available to India till mid-2022.

In an inexplicable abdication of its mandatory duty, the Government has now claimed that it has nothing to do with the contract to Reliance Defence Ltd., saying it is the prerogative of Dassault to choose its Offset partner.

They posed the following questions to the Government:

• Did the Air Force urge that the original deal with its all-important multiple objectives be scrapped and a new one confined to 36 aircraft be concluded?
• How was the Air Force's studied 'estimate that it was in dire need of 126 aircraft summarily jettisoned?
• Did the new deal have the approval of the Cabinet Committee on Security at the time that the Prime Minister announced it in April 2015 and, included it in the India-France Joint Statement?
• As this was entirely a new deal, why were fresh tenders not invited?

“Could an experienced manufacturer like Dassault have picked a company that had no experience whatsoever of manufacturing aircraft, one which had just been incorporated, without the approval from the government, which was necessary under its own offset policy,” they asked.

AII the more so, because at the time, Reliance Defence, a year-old company, had a debt of ₹8000 Crore and had an accumulated loss of ₹1,300 Crore?