Sitharaman, Rahul lock horns over HAL
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, January 7
Politics over the purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets continued today with the government and the Opposition fielding stalwarts to attack and counter-attack one another.
Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman trashed Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s accusations of lying to the House about the quantum of government investment in Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) in a statement made this morning. Gandhi yesterday cited news reports to question the minister’s Friday remarks that the government had invested Rs 1 lakh crore in HAL by way of orders while the UPA had nothing for the public sector undertaking.
“The doubts raised in this regard are incorrect and misleading… I have received confirmation from HAL that from 2014 to 2018 contracts worth Rs 26,570.80 crore have already been signed and orders worth Rs 73,000 crore are in the pipeline. I had specifically mentioned that there are 83 LCA Tejas fighter orders worth Rs 50,000 crore, 15 combat helicopter orders worth Rs 3,000 crore, 200 more helicopter orders worth Rs 20,000 crore, 19 Dornier transport aircraft worth Rs 3,400 crore, helicopters worth Rs 15,000 crore and aero engines worth Rs 8,400 crore. All of them put together comes to Rs 1 lakh crore. So what I said was the truth,” she said amid furor in the LS after Congress MP KC Venugopal gave a notice of privilege against her. Speaker Sumitra Mahajan confirmed the receipt of the notice.
The minister’s remarks didn’t cut ice with Gandhi who returned to accuse her of “lying”. “The Defence Minister’s claim that the government has given Rs 73,000 crore to HAL is a lie. The minister also lied about her middle-class background.
“That said, I again ask her to answer in a yes or a no if Defence Ministry officials objected to the Prime Minister reducing the Rafale purchase order from 126 jets to 36. Lastly, why has the government not given money to HAL which has delivered orders to it but has given Rs 20,000 crore to Dassault which hasn’t delivered a single jet?” Gandhi asked, accusing the government of destroying HAL to benefit Anil Ambani’s fledgling defence firm which got the offset contract from Dassault.
“The government is destroying HAL to help Anil Ambani’s firm get aircraft orders even when that firm has no experience in the sector,” Gandhi said
After this, Sitharaman tweeted “it’s a shame that the Congress president is spreading lies. Will he apologise to the nation and resign?”
Later today the Congress fielded former Defence Minister AK Antony to accuse the government of “misleading the Lok Sabha by saying that the UPA had ordered post approval reviews of the lowest bidder for the multi medium role combat aircraft in 2012.”
“Both the Finance and Defence Minister lied. The deal had not been approved in 2012. I asked the contract negotiation committee of the time to address all concerns around Dassault’s Rafale emerging as the lowest bidder after we received representations including from BJP’s Subramanian Swamy and Yashwant Sinha about corruption in the issue,” Antony said.
