It is time the Prime Minister spoke on Rafale and cleared the air

The govt's rebuttals on Rafale deal lack conviction

The controversy over how the Bharatiya Janata Party-led (BJP-led) government has gone about purchasing 36 Rafale fighters for the air force, and over the selection of Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence group for discharging offsets related to this deal, has taken on a new dimension. Former French president Francois Hollande has claimed that the Indian government ordered that Dassault, which builds the Rafale in France, should enter into offset partnerships with Reliance Defence, and that Paris had no choice in the matter. Mr Hollande’s allegation that Mr Ambani was New Delhi’s nominee directly contradicts what Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley have been saying — that Dassault chose to partner Reliance of its own free will.

The “rebuttals” to Mr Hollande’s allegations — emanating from Paris, Dassault and New Delhi — fail to convince. The French government’s statement does not contradict Mr Hollande. Instead, it backs him in stating that Paris had no role in selecting Mr Ambani as the offset partner. It further states that the Indian procurement procedure provides full freedom to French companies to select offset partners, but that only bypasses Mr Hollande’s implicit allegation that New Delhi had violated its own procurement procedures. Similarly, Dassault’s statement does not contradict Mr Hollande directly, stating only that partnering Reliance was Dassault’s choice. Whether Dassault enjoyed a free choice remains an open question. New Delhi’s rebuttal, in contrast, began by directly attacking Mr Hollande, claiming that he was motivated by a “conflict of interest” relating to his personal life, since his partner, French actress Julie Gayet, was granted euro 1.6 million of financing by a Reliance Group company in 2016. But again, for many, this sounds more like a “conflict of interest” for Mr Ambani.

While Mr Hollande has not revealed who asked Paris to discharge offsets through The Reliance Group, it is clear that Mr Modi was the interlocutor to the French president at the time the Rafale purchase was first agreed upon. The Indian government can no longer issue answers and rebuttals from officials and ministers who were not party to direct conversations between Mr Hollande and Mr Modi. Ms Sitharaman, who is the government’s point-person in the debate over the Rafale, was not even defence minister at that time; and then defence minister, Manohar Parrikar, was sitting in Delhi. Mr Jaitley was not involved in the deal in any way. The former French president has raised allegations and it is up to India’s prime minister to respond to the growing number of questions that remain unanswered.

The defence minister’s promise last year to reveal the details of the Rafale cost and her subsequent backtracking on the grounds of inter-government confidentiality have already created enough confusion and encouraged the impression that there is something to hide. Mr Modi’s steadfast silence will only add to this impression. On Monday, Ms Sitharaman declared that the government needed to “fight the perception battle”, for which many BJP leaders would be speaking across the country. This is unlikely to be enough. Many of them have been defending the quality of Rafale, which has never been the issue. It is time for the prime minister to defend the deal himself.