A multi-billion dollar deal for 36 Rafale French fighter jets has got the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition in India at loggerheads.
Over 100 left-affiliated organizations will hold week-long protests across the country beginning Monday against what they allege is a “corrupt” deal favoring one of India’s richest industrialists.
Demonstrations and sit-ins, under the banner of ‘Jan Ekta Jan Adhikar Andolan’ (People’s Unity and Rights Movement), are being organized by left-backed outfits at state and district-levels to “raise awareness” about the “scam” from October 22-28.
As India gears up for what is expected to be a tightly-contested general election in a few months, the protests are seeking to highlight the alleged “wrongdoings” of the ruling right-wing government.
In 2016, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed an $8.7 billion deal for 36 Rafale fighter planes from France, the country’s first major acquisition of combat planes in two decades.
But it has since faced criticism from Indian opposition parties who allege severe wrongdoing in one of the country’s biggest defense deals.
Opposition parties, like the Congress and the Left, say India overpaid for the planes and are also questioning why a private firm with no experience in the defense sector, tycoon Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defense Ltd, was awarded the contract instead of the state-run manufacturer, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.
Former French President Francois Hollande, who approved the deal when he was in office, created a stir last month when he revealed that the Narendra Modi government in New Delhi forced Dassault Aviation to choose Ambani for the deal.
“We had no choice. We took the partner that was given to us,” Hollande was quoted as saying in an explosive interview to French investigative news service, Mediapart.
Modi’s BJP denied the allegations.
On Monday, Hannan Mollah, organizer of the left-backed demonstrations and former lawmaker from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said the protests will help build public opinion.
“We are demanding a joint parliamentary committee to investigate the deal. This is a massive scam. Why has the number of planes decreased to 36 from the earlier planned 126? Why has the agreed price of the jets increased three-fold since 2014? Who is responsible for the final amount we are paying for the jets?” Mollah told Al Jazeera from Bengaluru city.
“The government rejected the state-run defense firm HAL and forced France to give the contract to a private player, a businessman friend of the government. This is a sweetheart deal,” he said.
Opposition will counter the government’s lies through protests at the grassroots level, the left leader said.
“We will not let the government run away, we are taking it to the people. Ninety percent of the people are unaware that public money has been looted, they have to be told. There is also a strange silence from the Indian media which is not holding the powers accountable,” Mollah said.
Several members of the BJP denied the charges, saying the opposition was undermining national security in their bid to target Modi.
“A lie repeated a hundred times cannot become the truth. The CAG [India’s official auditing agency], which will audit the deal, is already looking into it. They will file a report with the parliament. Let’s wait for the report,” Sudhanshu Mittal, spokesperson of the BJP party, told Al Jazeera.
