N Ram, in his article on the Rafale agreement (February 8, 2019) claims that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) officials, in a hand-written note (apparently cropped by The Hindu, seemingly altering its meaning) asked officials in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) not to interfere with ongoing negotiations with Dassault. It is precisely such dilatory tactics, however, by a section of MoD officials and the arms lobby — long used in defence deals with kickbacks — that have eroded India’s defence capability over the years. This clearly compelled the PMO to fast-track the Rafale agreement to overcome stalling tactics since, in a government-to-government deal, arms dealers and their mentors are cut out.

The tone and tenor of reporting in all their political narratives, by Hindu and NDTV have been seen to be highly partial devoid of any professional ethics. The wilful omission of the then MoD in the file by Hindu Ram is highly condemnable. Ram has obviously lowered his limits in the recent article in the first page of his paper which smacks venom. He never bothered to verify the truth before reporting that is expected of him.

The head of the Rafale negotiating team, Air Marshal SBP Sinha, slams the selective use of the MoD note. The then defence secretary G Mohan Kumar has also clarified that the dissent note had nothing to do with the pricing of the Rafale jets. “It was about sovereign guarantees and general terms and conditions,” Kumar told ANI when asked if he remembered the context of the note.

The BJP, meanwhile, described Rahul Gandhi’s allegations in the Rafale deal as “yet another lie from his lie-manufacturing factory” and accused the Congress president of working at the behest of foreign forces for the cancellation of the fighter aircraft deal.

As one KP Eshwar wrote in his Facebook, that he could not digest and believe that N Ram could do such a ‘dishonest’ job. He adds, ‘in your TV interview, you said, “It’s a developing story” with a sheepish smile. Agree. If it’s a developing story, will you publish the rest of the MoD note on the same page and say ‘Sorry’ to people for indulging in ‘yellow journalism’? YOU WILL NOT, BECAUSE YOUR agenda is different as now the people of India have figured it out.

Remember, your paper is read by the educated segment of the society. And they can see through your game, except for some die-hard fans of the Gandhi family.

I can understand the mindless uttering of Rahul Gandhi on this issue. He is justified in his own way as he is fighting a big battle for his family’s survival in Indian politics. As every lie of his is getting caught before sunset, I leave it to the people of this country to decide on his fate.

But in all this, YOU STAND EXPOSED TODAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS POLITICAL WAR. With nowhere to go.

May the journalist in you rest in peace!’

ED confronts Vadra with the Emails that expose Robert Vadra’s undeclared properties overseas and money laundering.

The emails are regarding the renovation of a property in London, namely 12 Bryanstone Square, in which Vadra is in a discussion with Sumit Chadha, a close relative of arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari. Bhandari is being probed in the same case, apart from being accused of hiding other overseas properties. He is accused of money laundering, too.

On April 4, 2010, at 9:12 PM, Chadha wrote to Vadra asking some clear assurances & timelines on which he will be reimbursed.

Vadra replied to Chadha’s email on April 15, 2010. The subject of his mail back to Chadha was ‘Re: Bryanstone Sq’. Vadra said: “Was not aware that nothing had reached you. Will look into it in the morning and let Manoj sort it out. Will be in London soon too. You take care. Cheers.”

The Manoj here is most probably Manoj Arora, the then executive assistant to Vadra. Manoj is being questioned by the ED already.

Meanwhile, in its charge sheet, the ED had claimed that Bhandari had purchased the said property in London in 2009 for £ 1.9 million (British pound-sterling) and sold in June 2010 for the same amount, despite incurring additional expenses of approximately £ 65,900 on the renovation of this property.

The ED has concluded that Bhandari was not the actual owner of the property, but it was beneficially owned by Robert Vadra, who was incurring expenditure on the renovation of this property. The email strongly supports this claim by the ED.

The investigators have confirmed that Vadra has denied links with Bhandari. Vadra has denied having illegal properties abroad, including those in London, too.

Meanwhile, the ED claimed that Vadra directly or indirectly owns at least nine properties in London, which include villas and luxury flats. These properties were purchased between 2005 and 2010. The ED is probing whether these properties were purchased from the alleged kickbacks received from a petroleum deal.

An investigation into Sanjay Bhandari was launched in 2016, as he had not disclosed his foreign assets in the shape of foreign bank accounts and foreign immovable assets and thus evaded tax.

The income-tax authorities had raided Bhandari’s premises and recovered digital evidence pertaining to 12 Bryanstone Square in London. Vadra, according to the ED, was also executing renovation work of this property through Sumit Chadha as well as arranging funds for it.

The ED has claimed further that the payment of £ 1.9 million for the property was made from account number 1021497657901 of Santech International FZC UAE with Emirates NBD Al-Qusais Branch UAE. There was also a credit to the tune of £ 1879000 on June 30, 2010, in the abovementioned bank account apparently from proceeds of the sale of the same property to Sky Lite Investment FZE, UAE. The abovementioned account belongs to Santech International FZC, a company controlled by Sanjay Bhandari, the ED believes.

Yesterday, Hours after a “personal visit” to Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar at his office in Panaji, Congress President Rahul Gandhi today claimed that the former Defence Minister had clearly stated he had nothing to do with the “new deal” on Rafale fighter jets.

Parrikar reprimand Rahul Gandhi in his letter, “Paying a courtesy visit and then stooping so low as to make a false statement for petty political gain has raised, in my mind, questions about the sincerity and purpose of your visit itself.”

“Here am I fighting against a life-threatening illness. Due to my training and ideological strength. I wish to serve Goa and its people against any/all odds. I thought your visit would give me your good wishes in that cause of serving our people. Little did I know that you had other intentions,” Parrikar wrote.

“With deep disappointment, I write to you hoping that you would put out the truth. Kindly do not use your visit to an ailing person to feed political opportunism,” Parrikar wrote.

Parrikar went on to clarify that the procurement of the Rafale was as per the Defence Procurement Procedure. “I have said this before and wish to reiterate it again in today’s context too. The fighter aircraft are procured following all stated procedures keeping national security as top priority.”

A sensible person would feel sorry immediately. He would not… He responds ‘I empathise with your situation. I understand the immense pressure you are under after our meeting yesterday. Pressure that has forced you to take the highly unusual step of demonstrating your loyalty to the PM and his cronies by attacking me in this uncharacteristic manner’. He holds on to his lies… Is he not insane?

Earlier also ‘the joker’ failed to authenticate in the parliament the ‘audio proof’ of Parikkar talking to his state cabinet colleague on Rafale (later he went on winking for which he was politely pulled up by the parliament speaker).

Why does he behave like a child? Should he exploit a courtesy call to a terminally ill patient, for lying? May be he would have thought Parikkar may not have energy to rebut his blatant lie! Very mean of him….

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy has filed a petition against Priyanka and Karti for illegally holding multiple DINs. DIN is a unique number issued by Registrar of Companies (RoC) for those who become directors in companies. As per Companies Act, holding more than one DIN is a punishable offence with imprisonment of six months and a fine of Rs 50,000.

Mrs Vadra through a letter admitted having made multiple DIN applications. Mrs Vadra has also stated that this happened due to inadvertent mistakes which were unintentional. While the Ministry decided to condone the illegality of Priyanka by imposing fine, it found that the UPA Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s son Karti prima facie violated provisions of Companies Act for holding six DINs. The ministry has asked Karti to reply within 15 days.

Reacting to this development, Swamy said in a statement that, “the commission of offence under Company law regarding multiple DIN has been committed by a very large number of people in the Congress. I have compiled a list of these persons and will be filing criminal case against all of them. My next complaint will be against Robert Vadra’s violations in Company law by not filing mandatory statements like balance sheets for the past three years.”

‘Swatch Bharath’ in the functioning of companies formed for ‘legally money laundering’!!

Gold heist by influential persons close to the UPA government:

The circumstantial evidence that raises serious doubts about the scheme which was initiated by the UPA government. Questions have been raised as to whether the Finance Ministry under Chidambaram should have changed the scheme on May 21, 2014, bringing large trading houses under its ambit, when his government was a caretaker government since the results of the Lok Sabha elections were known at that time. It is also important to ask why the Modi government allowed the amended scheme to continue for six months despite the spike in gold imports being common knowledge.

Besides the Customs Act, the 80:20 gold trading scheme prima facie violated the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act and should be investigated by the ED, the DRI and the CBI. In fact, in a speech in Parliament in July 2018, BJP MP Nishikant Dubey sought to indict officials in the Finance Ministry for allowing this scheme to continue and called for a probe by the ED and the CBI.

Will the Modi government heed the advice of one of its own MPs a few months before the next general elections take place? Will such an investigation ever take place in view of the likely involvement of affluent and influential individuals?

Why we are not able to call a spade, a spade? Fear of being stamped non-patriotic? It is a hard truth that some our PSUs have not been nurtured to become world class manufacturers because of the inherent work culture inherited in the Nehruvian era. MMS under PVNR started the cleanup operation under lot of resistance in all their earnest and sent a shivering message of ‘perform or perish’ to the non-performers but the campaign lost steam due to the coalition ‘compulsions’.

Now let us come to the brass stacks on Rafale and HAL:

The HAL has been shunned by Sukhoi design bureau and the Mikoyan group and Dassault is the latest one to decline sharing tech with them. HAL’s lack of expertise raised the cost of the Rafale even further while also not guaranteeing Dassault of the equipment quality. They proposed to bill 3 times the number of hours required to build 108 Rafales in India and raised the deal price for just the jets alone from 12 billion euros to 17 billion euros. i.e. nearly 140.74 million euros per jet for the 108 jets proposed to be built at HAL.

Consequently, Dassault refused to partner with HAL and explored a private vendor (Reliance Defense and Naval’s new offshoot, Reliance Aerospace). For those who don’t know Reliance Defense, it operates our largest shipyard and manufactures corvettes, stealth ships etc for the Navy and has a massive heavy engineering division. For Some Mavericks, Reliance is ‘anathema’ for reasons best known to them while Tatas is palatable!

Coming to the cost of the deal. We need a decisive advantage in the air against Pakistan and China. The Su-30 MKIs are made in Russia and the Chinese know this aircraft very well. They have purchased their own Su-37s and Su-35s to counter and we have virtually no response to them. Consequenly, Modi changed the paradigm by getting a virtual 5 gen(enhanced 4.5gen) jet which gives us some combat capability against the Chinese. These jets come at nearly twice the price of the Sukhoi 30 (91 million euros) and were supposedly planned to be acquired by the congress at an even higher price. Infact so much so, that the congress would end up paying 14 billion euros for the same 36 jets if they included all the weaponry and support they have in this deal. The BJP saved us 6 billion euros. We should be thankful.

Please take a technical course to those in opposition who really don’t understand. some refuse to understand is another story. Also the JPC jargon: it is only a political muscle; It works on political lines and has not brought any investigative techno-economic issues in any of the scams earlier, including Bofors (Shankar Anand committee legalised the corruption money in bofors payoff as ‘winding up charges’… )

For various reasons the track record most of the defence PSUs, particularly of Aeronautical Development Agency and HAL, is poor. The development trajectory of the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft ‘Tejas’, for example, took more than three decades. One reason could be, there is no compulsion to perform as in any government organisation. Also, It suits those in power, since the defence purchases are ‘kalpa vruksha’ as they are big ticket imports. It quenched the thirst of all those involved, be it, those in power, bureaucrats, defence personnel and ‘notorious’ middle men. Seven decades have passed, No point in shedding crocodile tears now.

When india was born, the eco system demanded government investment to create institutions for research, development and production in public sector. But the country has grown sufficiently in both capability and financial muscle. More than nurturing PSUs by pouring tax payers money, a competitive private sector can also have their share of ‘cake’ and raise to ‘occasion’.

What is the remedy? There is a shining American model to emulate: Create military industrial complexes comprising of a web of defence research universities, domain experts and private companies that can quickly assess the country’s strategic needs and translate this into modernisation and weapons platform development. Unlike defence PSUs, private players will be nimbler as they have a better work culture and won’t be bogged down by India’s notorious bureaucratic style of functioning. What’s needed is a plan to build an indigenous private defence complex that will be vibrant within the next decade. That’s what government and opposition should be discussing, rather than playing politics with defence.

Blind opposition to private sector may hoodwink the voters in the election time but would not be in the best interest of the nation in the long run. Don’t create rhetoric over private players in defence production to get the votes! The opposition firmly believes that unless some corruption stain stays on Modi, he would be invincible. This has worked in bringing down earlier regimes.

If you want status quo on policies that would bring in transparency and keep the middleman at bay, what can be done? stir controversies during election season and repeatedly talk loudly about illusory mega-scams to frustrate those making changes! Opposition follows in both letter and spirit what Hitler once wrote in his biography ‘Mein Kamph’ ‘the most brilliant propagandist technique is one that confines it to a few points and repeat over and over – even a blatant lie would take the hue of gospel truth’!

The government is forced to be on its back foot and played safe. What has taken the hit? Defence sector make-in-India policy is still in draft stage! The defence output from the proposed defence corridors in UP and TN would not pickup the way one wishes it to be!

Hit by the Rafale controversy, the defence ministry has not moved to amend its offsets policy since May this year, when a draft was presented for comments. A new defence production policy that was promised in 2018 has also met a similar fate, with limited forward movement since the draft was issued in March. Potentially huge foreign investments especially for meeting offset conditions, are in suspended animation due to non-finalisation of these policies.

The extremely cautious bureaucratic approach in finalising the draft involving all the stake holders, in this potentially lucrative defence sector, is understandable. The ‘house of defence manufacturing & procurement’ is infested with lot of cob webs and well fed rats, requiring ‘sweeping’ changes if the targets have to be met…. but a golden opportunity is not to be missed…..!

Subsequent to the dismissal of the petition by SC, Govt moves SC seeking correction in para which makes reference to CAG report, PAC:

In the judgment on Friday, the apex court had noted that the pricing details have been shared with CAG, and the report of the CAG has been examined by the PAC. To quell the misinterpretation of the documents submitted in the sealed cover, in the judgment by the court, the government has submitted an application to the court.

The issue of CAG and PAC was mentioned in para 25 of the judgment of the top court which had held that there were no irregularities in the procurement of 36 Rafale jets from France.

The judgment had said that the material placed before it shows that the Centre did not disclose in Parliament the pricing details of the Rafale fighter jet, but revealed it to the Comptroller and Auditor General.

It is a pity, even after all these, a lay-Indian voter believes ‘there must be fire even when there is no smoke’ based on the congress corruption culture!

Another corruption catch in UPA regime out of the bag?

According to New York Times, the world famous consultancy firm McKinsey has got entangled in a bribery case involving Boeing. Its report became key evidence in a battle over the extradition of the powerful Ukrainian oligarch, Mr. Firtash, charged in a scheme to help Boeing.

In 2006, Desperate for new supplies but with increasing titanium prices, Boeing latched onto a promising lead. A group of six international businessmen with plentiful financing had offered to mine and process five million to 12 million pounds of the metal potentially worth $500 million annually, much of it for sale to Boeing. The group, Bothli Trade A.G., controlled by Mr. Firtash, had already signed a memorandum of understanding for a joint mining venture with the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

Boeing turned to McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm with the golden pedigree, purveyor of “best practices” advice to partner with this group. McKinsey says it advised Boeing of the risks of working with the oligarch Mr. Firtash, who had made billions of dollars brokering gas sales to Ukraine from Russia and former Soviet republics, and recommended “character due diligence.”

McKinsey described what it said was the potential partner’s strategy for winning mining permits. It included bribing Indian officials. The mining venture never materialized, but Mr. Firtash was indicted on charges of directing $18.5 million in bribes to Indian officials for mining permits.

McKinsey’s report on Boeing, will now haunt the erstwhile Indian regime of rampant corruption and would engage legal hawks like Dr Subramaniam Swamy, who would champion such cases! Watch out for big news….

Congress was ruling both at the centre and the AP state at the time the Rs 100 crore bribe was paid for getting the mining rights. An Indian official has been indicted (the name is not revealed to the public as the trial by the grand jury was held in camera) who would likely to be requested by US for extradition from india to face the trial along with the Ukrainian oligarch Firtash. When the indian official spills the beans, which top political head in india would roll? This would happen in the lifetime of the present political dispensation as unlike in india, US does not take a long time to pronounce verdicts in courts (though YSR is not alive)!

UPA cupboard is full of skeletons; how does Rahul propose to cover the lid, as his ‘hit and run’ strategy would not bail him out in this case? God only knows!!

Interestingly it is a potential arsenal to BJP, though nothing conclusive would be revealed not before the elections, but plenty of axe to grind and masala to chew that would cause perceptible damage to congress by the ruling dispensation!

If you want status quo on policies that would bring in transparency and keep the middleman at bay, what can be done? stir controversies during election season and repeatedly talk loudly about illusory mega-scams to frustrate those making changes! Opposition follows in both letter and spirit what Hitler once wrote in his biography ‘Mein Kamph’ ‘the most brilliant propagandist technique is one that confines it to a few points and repeat over and over – even a blatant lie would take the hue of gospel truth’!

The government is forced to be on its back foot and played safe. What has taken the hit? Defence sector make-in-India policy is still in draft stage! The defence output from the proposed defence corridors in UP and TN would not pickup the way one wishes it to be!

Hit by the Rafale controversy, the defence ministry has not moved to amend its offsets policy since May this year, when a draft was presented for comments. A new defence production policy that was promised in 2018 has also met a similar fate, with limited forward movement since the draft was issued in March. Potentially huge foreign investments especially for meeting offset conditions, are in suspended animation due to non-finalisation of these policies.

The extremely cautious bureaucratic approach in finalising the draft involving all the stake holders, in this potentially lucrative defence sector, is understandable. The ‘house of defence manufacturing & procurement’ is infested with lot of cob webs and well fed rats, requiring ‘sweeping’ changes if the targets have to be met…. but a golden opportunity is not to be missed…..!