Will the low cost Israeli Athos gun scuttle India's ATAGS gun?
The army has long been deficient in artillery, the modern battlefield's most lethal killer, says Ajai Shukla.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's parliamentary body on Wednesday decided to rake up the Bofors pay-off issue in Parliament in the wake of fresh allegations that then prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi may have 'soft-pedalled' the probe to protect Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday said the Tatra scam was the second biggest after the Bofors scam and demanded immediate resignation of Defence Minister A K Antony for allegedly patronising corruption. "This (Tatra) is the second biggest scam after the Bofors scam and it has exposed the fact that the weapons of our soldiers are not up to standard," BJP national spokesperson Prakash Javdekar told a press conference.
Congress member of Parliament Mani Shankar Aiyar says the Bofors case must be treated as closed and the Bharatiya Janata Party should learn that truth cannot be unveiled by resorting to "character assassination and downright lies".
'We were against politicisation of the defence acquisition process. It was a question of capability of the air force'
One of the biggest gaps in the Bofors saga is the absence of an objective and full-fledged enquiry into the role played by the intelligence and investigative agencies in the entire saga under Rajiv Gandhi as well as V P Singh, writes B Raman.
"I knew what I was doing when I leaked the documents to you. I could not count on my government or Bofors or the Government of India to get to the bottom of this." Sten Lindstrom, former head of Swedish police who led the investigations into the Bofors-India gun deal, explains why he chose to turn whistleblower to Chitra Subramaniam-Duella, in an interview published on the website hoot.org
Malik believes he can solve the problems of farmers and is sending signals to the government to give him a chance.
In a 206-page petition submitted to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on Sunday, Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy sought to prosecute Congress President Sonia Gandhi under the Prevention of Corruption Act in the Bofors case.
A website recently carried his interview claiming that when Fernandes wanted to see the file, Vajpayee asked him to keep his hands off.
President Pranab Mukherjee called the Bofors scandal a media trial that could not be proven in any Indian court
'Landmark developments herald the end of two decades of stagnation in the army's modernisation plans,' notes Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
Advocate Ajay Agrawal, who had filed an application questioning government's effort in securing the foreign national's extradition from Argentina after he was detained on February 6, 2007, said the El Dorado court declined India's request as the original arrest order of 1997 by a court in New Delhi was not produced by the CBI. He was responding to the order passed by the Argentine court, the translated copy of which was provided to him by the Centre.
Two aborted missions, three different ministers, multiple rule changes and two decades later, Indian taxpayers will no longer have to pay Rs 20 crore per day to keep the loss-making Air India flying. While opposition Congress expectedly attacked the decision as selling the family silver, DIPAM secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said what Tata is getting is not a cash cow but an airline which is bleeding where money needs to be pumped in to refurbish obsolete aircraft and dust up strangled ones while being unable to touch any employee for one year and only be able to resize staff after paying a VRS. "It won't be a very easy task there. Only advantage is they (new Air India owner) are paying the price which they think they can manage. "They are not taking the excessive debt accumulated to fund years of losses. We are continuing it as an ongoing concern.... This process has also saved huge amount of taxpayers money going forward," Pandey told PTI.
The CBI filed the appeal against the May 31, 2005 decision of the high court by which all accused, including Europe-based industrialists Hinduja brothers, were discharged from the Rs 64-crore pay-off case.
CPM said the Bofors gun deal was "an important case highlighting corruption in high places" and did not deserve such an end.
Congress has repeatedly alleged a "scam" in the purchase of Rafale fighter jets claiming the cost per aircraft in 2012 was agreed at Rs 526.10 crore while the one signed by the Modi government costs 7.5 billion (Rs 1,670.70 crore per aircraft).
Controversial Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, who was a key figure in the Bofors payoffs scandal, has died in Milan following a stroke.
'Sweden claimed inability to track the payments through Swiss bank accounts after making a half-hearted request for Swiss assistance,' it said.
In his hard-hitting speech at a gathering of ex-servicemen, the prime minister referred to the Bofors scam, AgustaWestland chopper scam, Rafale issue and inordinate delays in procurement of critical military platforms and ammunition by previous government.
The Italian businessman is one of the main accused in the Bofors payoff scam.
'Some of his decisions were not so good, but his intentions were always guided by a deep national interest.'
The Congress has alleged irregularities in the deal for 36 aircraft and claimed that the Narendra Modi government is buying them at a price much higher than the one that was being negotiated by the previous government. The party has also been accusing the government of favouring Anil Ambani's firm in the deal.
An occasional quiz to improve Narendrabhai's grasp of Indian history...
Indigenous 155 mm artillery guns, made on the lines of Swedish Bofors howitzers procured by the army in the 1980s, will go for last round of trials at Pokhran firing ranges along the Indo-Pak border in Rajasthan next month.
This sum, said the CBI, provided for 8.24 per cent commission to accused Hinduja brothers, Win Chadha and Ottavio Quattrocchi.
It said it was not convinced with the grounds of the CBI to condone over 4,500 days' delay in filing the appeal. The CBI had filed the appeal on February 2 this year.
After lot of deliberation, the CBI this year got the nod from the NDA government to file an appeal in the apex court.
The government does not plan to launch any fresh probe into the Bofors gun deal and Ottavio Quattrocchi stands "discharged" as he could not be extradited even after 20 years of registration of the case, Defence Minister A K Antony said.
The Central Bureau of Investigation seeks two weeks time in a Delhi Court for exploring the options available to it following withdrawal of Red Corner notice against Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi in the Bofors payoff case.
'Didi' became the real 'Dada' as she got past the post, on a wheelchair and a foot in cast, a souvenir from the Nandigram battle against former protege-turned-rival Suvendu Adhikari.
The country has learnt that corruption in defence deals is a fact of life, and has to be dealt with maturely, says T N Ninan
He also cautioned against politicisation of defence purchases, suggesting that this had earlier led to the delay in the army acquiring the Bofors gun.
Commenting on Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde's statement that coal block allocation scam would be soon forgotten, Shiv Sena on Sunday said he articulated 'attitude' of the United Progressive Alliance government.
Sticking to its demand for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's resignation for the irregularities in coal block allocation, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday termed the United Progressive Alliance government as the "most corrupt" and demanded cancellation of 142 allocated coal blocks. "There is no doubt that this UPA government is the most corrupt government of all times. Earlier, the Bofors scam was considered the biggest, in which Rs 64 crore was taken as bribe," he said.
He also took a dig at Arvind Kejriwal for his remarks that the Modi government does not have 'enough courage' to arrest Sonia Gandhi, saying the Delhi chief minister was feeling left out because he did not get any media publicity for the last 10 ten days when the focus was on the VVIP chopper scam.
Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Saturday said the coal issue will soon fade away from public memory as happened in case of Bofors.
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