Congress delegation to meet CAG over Rafale deal

The Congress delegation will meet Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on Wednesday to seek a probe into the alleged irregularities in the high-profile Rafale fighter aircraft deal.

A Congress delegation would meet at 11.15 a.m. and party leaders like Ghulam Nabi Azad, Ahmed Patel, Randeep Singh Surjewala and Vivek Tankha are likely to be part of the delegation. Congress President Rahul Gandhi may also join for the meet.

The Congress has been continuously holding a series of press conferences on the Rafale issue, raising several questions on the deal done by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government with France to purchase the Rafale fighter jets. However, the Centre has denied all the allegations imposed by the opposition.

The Rafale jets were chosen during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) tenure in 2012. Initially, India had planned to buy 18 off-the-shelf jets from France, with 108 others to be assembled in the country by the state-run aerospace and defence company HAL.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government scrapped the UPA's plan in 2015 and announced that it would buy 36 "ready-to-fly" Rafale jets instead of seeking a technology transfer from France's Dassault Aviation and making the aircraft in India.