Challenges SC finding on pricing

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday said a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report on the pricing details of the Rafale deal simply does not exist.

Mr. Gandhi’s statement directly challenges the Supreme Court’s finding that the government shared with the CAG the pricing details of the deal for 36 Rafale jets. In its judgment, a Bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said the CAG report was examined by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). It said a “redacted portion” of the report had been placed before Parliament and is in the “public domain.”

“This is the foundation of the Supreme Court judgment. That pricing has been discussed in the CAG report. And here we have Kharge ji [Mallikarjun Kharge] who is the chairman of the PAC. He is not aware of any CAG report or PAC report… I don’t know what is happening? In this 21st century, I don’t know if Modi ji has set up his own PAC in his PMO,” Mr. Gandhi said.

“Where is the CAG report? Can the government show it to us or show it to the PAC chairman,” he added.

‘False information’

The petitioners, former Union Ministers Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan, expressed their shock at the false information about the CAG report. “No CAG report on Rafale has been submitted or examined,” they stated.

The court records that there was an agreement between the “parent Reliance company” and Dassault in 2012 for offset contracts. However, Reliance Defence Ltd was incorporated only on March 28, 2015 and its subsidiary company Reliance Aerostructure Ltd was incorporated the next month on April 24, 2015.