The Rafale Deal is a deal between the Defence Ministry of India from France’s Dassault Aviation in which India will make a purchase of 36 multirole fighter aircraft for a price determined to be the value of Rs 58,000 crore i.e. 7.8 billion dollars. The Rafale Deal was made by the UPA government 10 years ago, in the Congress reign which they delayed to finalize and since then it is pending. Modi Government has now finalized it and as any defence deal is controversial anywhere in the world, the Congress President Mr. Rahul Gandhi made this deal a big controversy in order to use it as a weapon in elections. The Congress campaign for trying to prove that Rafale Deal is a fraud is nothing but an act of politics which they are playing as most of the people think that corruption always takes place where a defence deal is done. They all are trying to take political advantage out of it despite thinking about the fact that this can highly affect India’s security.
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What is Rafale Deal Controversy?
The Rafale Deal Controversy is nothing but a political controversy in India which is raised by none other than Congress’s President Mr. Rahul Gandhi for his own political agenda. The Controversy is related to the purchase of 36 multirole fighter aircraft where first Mr. Rahul Gandhi alleged said that “Under UPA governance, the purchase of Rafale aircraft was confirmed at 520 crores and that PM Modi went to France and increased the purchase price to Rs 1600 crore. He also said that the Defence Minister is not giving any details about the price of aircraft which means she has lied to the country that the secrecy pact was comprised in the contract.” Although, this saying of Rahul Gandhi later on showed wholly incorrect by Mr. Arun jaitley who is the Finance Minister of India as he claimed that:
- The Rafale Aircraft was not pegged at 520 crores, the average price per basic unit was Rs 688 crores.
- Price of Aircraft does not went up to Rs 1600 crores, instead Rs 1600 crores was the per unit price with weapons and enhancement.
- Price of each rafale plan does not magically increase, rather, it was Rs 255 crore decreased as compared to the deal made by Congress government.
After that Mr. Rahul Gandhi gave a statement over his supposedly meeting with the President of France for talking about Rafale deal in which the president said that there is no secrecy pact about the agreement which also proved wrong by the President of France himself. After Rahul Gandhi’s statement, France’s President claimed that everything that Rahul Gandhi said is wrong and the deal of fighter jet is under the category of the confidential deal and the government can’t reveal the information about it. However, Rahul Gandhi continued to stand by his statement in order to continue his campaign.
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Later Rahul Gandhi claimed that the Reliance Industries Limited of Anil Ambani is also involved in the Rafale Scam (named by Congress Party) and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi doing corruption by distributing some of the amounts to him for helping him in clearing his debt. The reason behind his absurd statement was the statement of Former President of France Hollande, who claimed that Reliance Industries is partners with the Indian Government in this deal. The M/s Dassault Aviation and the French Government denied this statement of the former President and they also claimed that there is no partnership as indicated by the former President regarding the 36 Rafale aircraft which are to be supplied by Dassault Aviation to the Indian Government. They continued with the statement by telling that the agreement of Government to Government under which, whole weaponized aircraft are agreed to come to the Air Force of India. There will be no manufacturing done in India, this proves that there is no partnership in the supply of the 36 Rafale aircraft.
If we talk about the M/s. Reliance Industries Ltd., in February 2012 which is during UPA regime, it entered into an MoU with Dassault Aviation according to the PTI report on 12.2.2012. This was the phase where the deal made by UPA Government was relating to 126 Rafale aircrafts, of which 18 were agreed to be manufactured in France and 108 in India. Rahul Gandhi’s allegation can also equally apply on the 2012 MoU. Rahul Gandhi has just made false allegations on the Rafale deal, nothing else and he is just repeating the same allegation again and again as he is not getting any new topic to talk upon. One of the ridiculous statement made by him was that the interest of soldiers of India has been compromised in the Rafale deal, while he cannot change the fact that the UPA government had delayed the accession of the Rafale deal which would have reduced the ability of Indian Military in there reign and that NDA government had finalized the deal with even lower cost.
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The conclusion of Rafale deal Controversy
Firstly, the Reliance Group was a part of the Rafale deal since 2012 and after that it stopped doing the defence production. Secondly, Reliance Group was already in defence but they are not partners in the Rafale deal. They do not hold any contract or agreement with both Government of India and Government of France. They were never selected by any Government as one of the offset partners. All the statements of Congress President Rahul Gandhi had proved wrong by the Government of France, Prime minister of France, Finance Minister of India, Defence Minister and many others who are a part of the Rafale Deal.
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