Sule says Pawar has been misunderstood on Rafale

With a senior leader quitting the party, NCP leader Supriya Sule on Friday said party chief Sharad Pawar's comment on the Prime Minister and the Rafale deal have been misunderstood as he has actually demanded a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into it.

In a series of tweets, she said it was "disappointing" that the issues raised by Pawar in an interview to a Marathi channel regarding the Rafale fighter jet deal were ignored.

Sule's comments came soon after party General Secretary Tariq Anwar quit the party and the Lok Sabha expressing his disagreement with Pawar who gave a clean chit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Rafale deal.

"It's disappointing that people have not heard Pawar ... where he has clearly raised three questions: 1) what is the justification for a 300 percent price increase from Rs 526 crore to Rs 1,670 crore which potentially could be a significant loss to the exchequer?," said Sule, a Lok Sabha member and a daughter of Pawar.

"2) If such doubts have been raised and the government is so confident, then why are they shying from setting up a JPC? 3) When the BJP raised both price and specification issues during the Bofors allegations, then why are they hiding behind artificial justification of secrecy of agreements vis-a-vis both commercial price and offset agreements."

Reacting to Pawar's interview in which he had said he did not think people doubt Modi's intentions on a personal level, Anwar told media: "The Prime Minister is fully involved in the Rafale deal.

"I have resigned from the NCP as well as the membership of Lok Sabha because I totally disagree with Sharad Pawar's statement in support of Modi on Rafale deal," said the 67-year-old who was expelled from the Congress in 1999 along with Pawar and P.A. Sangma after they questioned the foreign origins of Sonia Gandhi.

--IANS

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