Snehesh Alex Philip

As the dogfight between BJP and Congress intensifies, the truth has become casualty. However, one thing is certain. Rahul Gandhi has made a fool of himself by making most inappropriate comments. To allege (on the basis of an unauthenticated tape) that former defence minister has kept a secret file in his bedroom and is blackmailing the PM is the most puerile politics. Does this man deserve to the prime minister of India? As the allegations and counter-allegations continue, the common man seems to be confused. The only way out of this maze is to look for undeniable facts, i.e. the facts which have not been denied or could not be denied by the opposing parties, although they had opportunity to do so. Let me point out few: (1) Dassault Aviation was declared as L-1 in January 2012 and yet the Congress did nothing to finalize the contract. Instead (as alleged by Arun Jaitley in the parliament), the then Defence Minsiter, A.K.Antony wrote : “L-1 approved, but the process by which L-1 was decided should be reviewed” –The Congress has not denied this so far. (2) Jaitley insisted in the parliament that two sets of prices were bid by Dassualt Aviation during the UPA regime – one for the bare aircraft and second for weaponized aircraft. In the deal approved by the Modi regime, price for bare aircraft is 9% cheaper and for weaponized aircraft is 20 % cheaper. – The Congress has not denied this so far. Now, if the price for 36 weaponized aircrafts in the revised deal was around Rs.58000 crore (in the earlier deal, it was 20% higher) the cost for 126 jets would have been Rs.203000 crore – a stupendous amount! Add to that possible escalation, considering the man-hours imbroglio, in manufacturing costs, had 108 been manufactured at HAL. Is this the reason, Antony refused to go ahead and sign the contract with Dassault?