Ye Rafale jets ki deal mein ho kya raha hai bhai?
I’m Vishnu Gopinath, for today's big story podcast, let's get straight to the latest on the Rafale deal. So if you remember, the government had put out a statement defending the deal. And now Former Union ministers Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie, and senior Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan submitted a reply to the Central government’s statement on the Rafale Jet deal on 14 November.
Get it? Matlab jawab ke upar jawab.
In fact, rather than me telling you, hear it from the people who filed the petition themselves. We spoke to former minister Yashwant Sinha. Listen to the podcast, and let him explain it to you.
Our main point was that the govt reply was not on oath. It was an unsigned note sent to the petitioners, and nobody knew who the owner of the note was. The note the govt had submitted was full of untruths and half-truths because they didn’t reveal everything they should have about procedure and offset pricing. We confronted them in court and the Attorney General was forced to admit this.Yashwant Sinha, Former Union Minister & Petitioner
In their reply, or ‘rejoinder’ for the listeners who understand legal-speak, the petitioners gave a point by point reply to the government’s statement defending the Rafale Jet deal.
The rejoinder starts off by saying that the govt’s reply explaining their decision-making process is misleading. After that it says that the information in the reply which was given to the petitioners’ is “undated, unsigned, and isn’t supported by an affidavit.”
If it was a government-to-government contract, there was no government guarantee, as it should have been in a contract of this nature. There was only a comfort letter from then-President Hollande. They didn’t disclose the fact that the offset contract rules were changed after the deal was announced. The govt gave up the power to be informed in advance about the offset partners and suggested in the rules that they could be selected by the vendors. At the same time they forgot to make amendments in the subsequent provisions that every contract should be approved by the Raksha Mantri.Yashwant Sinha, Former Union Minister & Petitioner
Apart from the points that Sinha highlighted, these are some of the other issues that the petitioners raised:
One, why and when did the govt decide that they’ll only need 36 aircraft and not 126 aircraft like the original Rafale Deal?
Second, the petitioners also said that they informed the SC that on 25 March 2015 – just 16 days before the joint statement was made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Hollande announcing the Rafale deal – the Dassault CEO had stated that they are in the final stages of finalising the contract with HAL for 126 aircraft.
There were many facts the govt did not divulge, which were in the public domain, which is why we could point them out. So, quite clearly the govt was trying to be clever by half by not revealing the entire truth and the govt representative in court was embarrassed when we pointed this out in court.Yashwant Sinha, Former Union Minister & Petitioner
This raises the question, when and how did Dassault change their preferred partner from HAL, which has an approximate 78 years of experience in defence and weapons manufacture to Reliance Defence which had a stupefying 14 days of experience being a defence company at the time.
Now the Supreme Court has heard both sides, and has reserved their order on the matter. This means that the verdict will be delivered later.
Opposition Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge said that the Rafale deal was given straight into the hands of certain industrialists.
Funnily enough Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had nothing to say when reporters asked her about the Rafale deal on 15 November.
That’s all we had to say on this edition of the big story, join us on Monday 19 November for another edition of the Big Story podcast.
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