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Rahul Gandhi, Nirmala Sitharaman carry on Rafale battle; accuse each other of lying
Congress president Rahul Gandhi accused defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman on lying on orders given to HAL, while Sitharaman said that she had never claimed that all the orders were signed
Congress president Rahul Gandhi and defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday traded charges once again in connection with the Rafale deal, this time on Twitter.
In response to a newspaper report on the state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) not yet receiving the orders mentioned by the defence minister during the Rafale debate in Parliament on Friday, Gandhi tweeted: “When you tell one lie, you need to keep spinning out more lies, to cover up the first one. In her eagerness to defend the PM’s Rafale lie, the RM lied to Parliament. Tomorrow, RM must place before Parliament documents showing 1 Lakh crore of Govt orders to HAL. Or resign.”
Responding to the Congress chief’s tweet, Sitharaman pointed out that she did not claim the orders were signed. “It’s a shame that the president of @INCIndia is spreading lies and misleading the country. HAL has signed contracts worth 26570.8Cr (Between 2014 & 2018) and contracts worth 73000Cr are in the pipeline. Will @RahulGandhi apologise to the country from the floor of the house and resign?” the defence minister’s office tweeted.
The orders related to these amounts are the same ones mentioned by the minister on Friday. On Sunday, she also tweeted out the specifics of these orders that she had mentioned in Parliament on Friday.
“Orders for 83 LCA Tejas fighters worth Rs 50,000 crore; for 15 combat helicopters worth Rs 3,000 crore; for 200 Kamov helicopters worth Rs 20,000 crore; for 19 Dornier transport aircraft worth Rs 3,400; other helicopters worth Rs 15,000 crore; Aero engines worth Rs 8,400 crore,” she said.
HAL has supplied 11 Tejas aircraft this financial year and would supply five more by the end of March, said an HAL official who asked not to be named. The organisation was scheduled to supply 16 units this year, as compared to eight last fiscal, and 83 by 2022, he added.
Defence ministry spokesperson Colonel Aman Anand refused to comment on the latest row pertaining to HAL. HAL chairman R Madhavan was not reachable over the phone.
HAL issued a statement on Twitter on Sunday saying its cash position was expected to improve by March.
“In view of the various media reports on HAL, following is clarified: HAL has taken overdraft of Rs 962 crores. With anticipated collection upto March, the cash position is expected to improve. Orders for LCA Mk1 A (83) & LCH (15) are in advanced stages,” it wrote.
The state-owned defence manufacturer’s order book as on March 31, 2018, was valued at Rs 61,123 crore, according to the company’s annual report. The report said the order book continued to be healthy and that good order inflow was expected in future years. The order book relates to equipment for the armed forces, primarily the Indian Air Force.
Defence orders take a long time to be decided, and, even after a decision is made, it takes time before they are placed. Often, the deliveries happen several years after the orders are placed.
HAL has been at the centre of the Rafale controversy. It was supposed to assemble 108 of the 126 aircraft the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was supposed to buy from Dassault Aviation.
That deal was scrapped by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government which signed a government-to-government deal with France to buy 36 fighters. The deal has become contentious and controversial with Opposition parties, including the Congress, saying the new deal cost more, that due process wasn’t followed in its signing, and that it was done to benefit Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence which has signed an offset deal with Dassault.
The government has maintained that the price is actually lower than the one in the old deal, and that offset deals do not involve the government. Dassault and Reliance have also insisted there is no wrongdoing in the case.
The Supreme Court has said, while ruling on petitions seeking an investigation into the deal, that it was convinced that due process was followed and that it did not want to get into the issue of pricing.
In Parliament on Friday, Sitharaman listed the orders in the works to establish her point that the NDA wasn’t ignoring HAL.
In 2017-18, HAL recorded its highest-ever turnover of Rs 18,284 crore with growth of 3.86% in comparison with the previous year’s turnover of Rs 17,604 crore. Profit before tax for the year was Rs 3,323 crore as against Rs 3,583 crore in the previous year. The profit after tax for the year stood at Rs 2,070 crore.
