Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who has served two terms as interim defence minister, seems to believe in the adage that the “best defence is a good offense”.
A day after the Congress alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a “direct” deal with industrialist Anil Ambani over the controversial purchase of 36 Rafale jets, Jaitley on Wednesday accused the largest opposition party of peddling “falsehood” over the purchase. Jaitley argued that the Modi government's Rafale deal was 20 per cent cheaper than what was negotiated by the Congress-led UPA.
As has been his wont in recent months, Jaitley took to writing a long post on Facebook on the Rafale deal.
Jaitley's post titled 15 Questions that Expose Congress Party’s Falsehood on Rafale begins with the genesis of the Indian Air Force's requirement to buy 126 fighter aircraft, which emerged shortly after the Kargil War, how the UPA conducted the tender process and delayed the purchase and concludes with 15 questions to Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and the party.
Jaitley labels as falsehood the Congress's three main accusations on the Rafale deal—the Modi government was buying the aircraft at a higher price than had been negotiated under the UPA's process, mandatory approvals were not taken and the fact that a private industrialist was favoured over HAL, a public sector undertaking.
Jaitley attacks the Congress on three grounds—it delayed the deal to buy 126 aircraft by a decade and endangered national security, it was peddling lies over the Modi government's deal for 36 Rafale jets and by raising allegations of irregularities, it was risking future defence procurements.
Jaitley mocks Gandhi for reportedly quoting different prices at different places for the Rafale deal that the UPA was negotiating for. “Gandhi quoted a price of Rs.700 crore per aircraft in Delhi and Karnataka in April and May this year? In Parliament, he reduced it to Rs.520 crore per aircraft, in Raipur he increased it to Rs.540 crore; in Jaipur, he used the two figures—Rs.520 crore and Rs.540 crore—in the same speech. In Hyderabad, he invented a new price of Rs.526 crore. Truth has only one version, falsehood has many,” Jaitley writes.
In his questions, Jaitley asks whether Gandhi was aware that if the “add-ons” demanded by the Indian Air Force were included, the Rafale deal negotiated by the UPA would have been nearly 20 per cent more expensive than the contract signed by the Modi government.
Jaitley also questions Gandhi over his knowledge of the government's offsets policy that was created under the UPA government, which allowed the original equipment manufacturer to choose a partner of its choice in India.