Congress also brings up ThePrint story on how Eurofighter was offering India a better deal, asks Modi govt to explain why the deal was rejected.
New Delhi: The Congress Friday raked up the controversial Rafale fighter jet deal once again, asking the government to explain how the new deal struck by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016 was better.
The deal was first negotiated by the Congress-led UPA government in 2012, before being finalised by Modi’s NDA government.
“The silence of the government has been deafening to say the least,” Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari told a press conference Friday.
“The government, unofficially, through source-based plants, keeps claiming that the contract it has negotiated is better than what the UPA had negotiated. If what the government is putting out is correct, then why is Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his government, his defence minister reluctant to release the exact price at which the Rafale has been purchased?”
Tewari also brought up an exclusive report by ThePrint, which said that the NDA government had passed up the opportunity to purchase Eurofighter Typhoon jets, which were Rs 453 crore per unit cheaper than the Rafales. “The story confounds the matter even further,” he said.
Read ThePrint’s exclusive:Before Rafale deal, Modi govt passed over option to buy Rs 453 cr/unit cheaper Eurofighter
The Congress demanded to know if the government had adequately evaluated the better Eurofighter deal. “We are not saying that the government can, or should, or should not, reject an offer, but then if you decide to do so and an offer which is cheaper by Rs 444 crore (sic) allegedly, you need to tell people why did you take that decision,” he said.
Stressing on the seriousness of the matter, Tewari also highlighted some facts from the letter, such as the 20,000 jobs that would be created and the transfer of technology that would have occurred had the government considered the Eurofighter deal.
“Under these circumstances, we would like to know from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we would like to know from the NDA-BJP government, that if you had terminated the contract for the purchase of 126 aircraft and decided to go in for a fresh contract for only 36 aircraft, then if there was an offer from a technically-qualified bidder and that offer was ostensibly cheaper than the final contract price, what happened to that offer?” Tewari asked.
Urging the government to answer these “basic questions”, Tewari also asked who was consulted before the ruling BJP went ahead with the new Rafale deal. He demanded a “matchstick on matchstick comparison” of the old UPA deal with the new NDA deal.