New Delhi: A delegation of senior Congress leaders met the Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) on Monday and demanded registration of a case in alleged corruption in the Rafale fighter jet deal.
The meeting comes days after a Congress delegation met the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and urged the apex auditor to prepare a report on the alleged irregularities in the deal and present it in Parliament.
The delegation met CVC KV Chowdary and submitted a detailed memorandum, accusing the government of causing loss to the public exchequer and endangering national security by bypassing state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) in favour of some businessman "friends" for offset contract.
"Rafale scam has now emerged as India's biggest defence scam. Tracks of corruption are getting unravelled by the day with repeated disclosures getting no answers from the Defence Ministry of the Government of the day. The stench of corruption and cronyism in the Rafale deal is nauseating, requiring urgent intervention by your goodself," the Congress memorandum to the CVC said.
The memorandum said that as per law, the government is bound to provide full information to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), "entire deal, its contours, nature of contract, absence of favouritism, corruption, crony capitalism, violation of law and procedures and the principles of level playing field are part of CVC's domain to examine and to return a finding". "The government is bound to disclose the price of 36 aircraft to scrutiny by CVC in light of the serious allegations of corruption and loss of money to public exchequer.
"We, therefore, request the CVC to undertake its statutory duty by examining record threadbare, so that corruption, crony capitalism, violation of law and procedure and
loss to public exchequer is brought out as the earliest," it further said.
The delegation comprised senior Congress leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad, Ahmed Patel, Anand Sharma, Kapil Sibal, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Jairam Ramesh, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Manish Tewari, Vivek Tankha, Parmod Tiwari and Pranav Jha.
Singhvi later told reporters that there are no answers with the government to various questions raised on the deal and no one is telling why the whole procedure took place in a reverse order.
"Why was a contract of Rs 30,000 crore given to a company that is on the verge of bankruptcy? How can they sideline a company like HAL?" he said. Congress leader Anand Sharma said, "We have urged the CVC to take cognisance of the memorandum submitted by us and we urged CVC to seal all files and documents and register an FIR."