The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) remarked on Tuesday that the Congress, or Indian National Congress (INC), should be renamed ‘I Need Commission’ (INC), in response to accusations that commissions were paid to secure the Rafale purchase between 2007 and 2012.
BJP’s national spokesperson Sambit Patra said Congress was attacking the ruling regime as it was dissatisfied that the “cut” on offer did not yield the final deal when it was in power.
Patra’s accusations came amid a fresh French media report alleged kickbacks in the multi-crore Rafale deal.
Coming down heavily on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who has been leading the party’s attack on the Narendra Modi government over the purchase of the fighter aircraft, Patra accused him of spreading “canard, disinformation and lies”. He also sought Gandhi’s response to the fresh revelation by French investigative journal Mediapart.
He should respond to this from Italy, Patra said, citing reports that the Congress leader is currently not in India.
The Congress hit back saying that the Modi government had launched “operation cover-up” and demanded to know why it had not probed the entire episode so far.
Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera said his party had been seeking a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the deal and wanted to know why the government had not yet agreed to this.
The Mediapart report said Dassault Aviation had paid the kickbacks to the intermediary in Mauritius between 2007 and 2012.
The Congress-led UPA was in power between 2004 and 2014, leading the ruling BJP for the first time to launch an aggressive counter-attack on the grand old party.
The Modi government had inked the deal on September 23, 2016, to procure 36 Rafale jets from Dassault Aviation after a nearly seven-year exercise to procure 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) for the Indian Air Force did not fructify during the UPA regime.
