Congress president Rahul Gandhi said on Tuesday that more facts on the Rafale fighter deal will be out soon, while telling the youth in his constituency that they lost jobs as a related contract went to the Reliance Group rather than Hindustan Aeronautics Limited which has a unit in Amethi.
"This is the beginning," he told reporters on the last day of the two-day trip to his Amethi Lok Sabha constituency.
He said more facts will emerge on the Rafale deal, and on the people involved with the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya.
"The truth will be before you and you can judge," he said.
Reminding his constituents that a Hindustan Aeronautics Limited unit was located in Amethi district, he repeated the charge that an offset deal wrongly went to Anil Ambani's Reliance group instead of the public sector HAL.
"The youth should understand that employment opportunities have been snatched from HAL and from you all," he said.
Targeting the prime minister, Gandhi said Narendra Modi had claimed he wanted to be the country ‘chowkidar' (watchman). “But he put Rs. 30,000 crore in Ambani's pocket.”
"The money which belonged to the youth and IAF was snatched from them and put in Ambani's pocket," he said.
"HAL has been making aircraft for the past 70 years, it made MiG, Sukhoi and Jaguar," he said.
"The youth should pay attention. Anil Ambani has not made an aircraft all his life. He floats a company just 10 days before and gets the contract," Rahul claimed.
The Reliance group has in the past rejected the charge that the current government was involved in its own commercial deal with Dassault, the French company which makes the Rafale fighter aircraft.
The Dassault-Reliance deal was meant to meet the government's offset policy of providing Indian companies business whenever overseas defence deals are signed.
Gandhi claimed under the previous UPA government that the deal would have gone to HAL.
"The thinking behind it was that fighter jets will be made here, it will generate employment, ensure technology transfer and the Air Force will be strengthened," he said.
"Narendra Modi becomes the prime minister and the Rs 526-crore aircraft is bought for Rs 1,600 crore,” he claimed.
"We asked the prime minister and the defence minister about the cost of the aircraft. But the defence minister says the youth do not have the right to know as there is a secret pact," the Congress chief said.
He also recalled the recent row over former French president Francois Hollande's reported claim – later rejected by that country's government – that the Indian side insisted that Dassault pick the Ambanis as their local partners.
"They can say whatever they want but the youth should remember that their money has been put into Ambani's pocket," Gandhi said.
Earlier, the Congress chief took part in a meeting of the district vigilance and monitoring committee.
BJP intensifies counter-attack on Congress over Rafale
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday gave details of alleged bribe, including a flat in London, given to Congress president Rahul Gandhi's brother-in-law Robert Vadra by a defence dealer as it intensified its counter-attack on the opposition party over the Rafale deal.
BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra asked Gandhi to respond to allegations involving Vadra, and claimed that people will answer his charges against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
"Vadra will certainly go to jail for allegedly helping a defence dealer in bagging contracts during the United Progressive Alliance's rule," Patra said, adding that the Modi government will act as per law and not with a 'mindset of revenge'.
At a press conference, the BJP leader gave the address of a London flat, details of the defence dealer's bank account through which money was allegedly paid to Vadra and his first class flight tickets bought by the dealer's travel firm.
Patra alleged that the flat belonged to Vadra and claimed that all transactions had happened when the Congress-led UPA was in power.
Vadra has been denying these allegations and has accused the Modi government of political vendetta.
Patra reiterated the BJP's charge that the UPA government had scrapped its deal with Dassault Aviation, which manufactured Rafale fighter aircraft, because the French firm declined to choose the dealer's firm backed by Vadra as its offset partner.
The Gandhi family and the UPA government 'looted' the country's interests and harmed the Indian Air Force to protect Vadra's interests, he said.
The BJP has turned the heat on the Congress and raked up alleged corruption of Vadra after Rahul Gandhi has targeted Modi, including by taunting him as a 'thief', over the alleged corruption in the Rafale deal, claiming that his government helped Anil Ambani's Reliance Defence to get a lucrative contract.
"Rahul Gandhi is exposed today. People who looted the country and sold out its interests are questioning our prime minister," Patra said, adding that the Congress president suffers from a sense of entitlement and cannot tolerate somebody like Modi as he comes from a poor background.
After Modi came to power in 2014, his government cracked down on the defence firm run by the dealer and it was blacklisted, Patra said, adding that the CBI has been investigating him, and he is out of country.
The UPA government had scrapped a contract given to the state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and helped the dealer by awarding it to a foreign firm, Pilatus, he said.
The CBI is probing the case, he added. Asked what action the government had taken against Vadra, the BJP spokesperson said he was an 'emperor' during the UPA whose fingers were in every deal.
It is no longer so, he claimed. "Vadra will definitely go to jail," he said, adding that it took over 20 years to convict fodder scam accused and former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad.
