 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we have a discussion on the release of the new book on the notorious Rafal deal written by Ravi Nair and Paranjay Gowar Thakurtha and we have both the authors with us today for this discussion. And as viewers of NewsClick will know this portal has covered the Rafal story in many different ways from different angles over the years and this gives us an opportunity to tie all this together. So, let me begin by asking Ravi. The book right from the outset lays out a pattern of twisting of procedures, decisions taken in one way while the rationale is some other and so on. But an overarching focus is what may be described as corruption while the book itself including several prefaces, four words etc. says the word corruption itself can mean many things. Yes, exactly. It means financial impropriety, it means twisting of institutions, it means breakdown of institutional processes and so on. To your mind, which dimension of corruption stands out the most to you? First of all, thank you so much Raku for inviting us for this discussion. When we speak about corruption, it has different dimensions. Agar-Potel and Endram clearly mentioned in the book, the foreword and the preface. In this case, when we call it a scandal, in the entire saga of this buying 36 Rafale, all the checks and balances were negated and one man unilaterally took the decision. That is Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the buck stops with him. So, the biggest, there are two aspects to it again. One, he violated all the set rules, ignored it, twisted it using the so-called IT cell and its ruling parties, IT cell and its missionary supportive media. And by doing so, it created a huge loss to the ex-checker by paying almost 50 percent higher than 40, 42 percent, 41, 42 percent higher than what the benchmark price was decided. So, these are the two main aspects in the corruption. These are corruption actually. Corruption, it is not only mean that when we speak about corruption, it is not only that somebody got the commission, we have no money trail in this. That is not the only corruption. Puranjai, same question to you and I think Ram mentions this in his introductory remarks as well, that in the previous major defense scam, the Bofors issue, you had something like a money trail which as Ravi just said doesn't seem to be so obvious in this case. But what do you think is the highlight of what you would call corruption? Okay. Now, thank you once again, Raghu for asking us to speak on our book. It took us almost five years to put it together. I think the overarching theme when you talk about corruption goes beyond financial corruption. We look at how one person, in this case the prime minister, he bypassed procedures, he compromised institutions on his own. In the process, he, in the name of national security, what happened was that national security was actually compromised. So, words that were uttered and the actual actions were just the opposite. On top of that, you had a situation where the announcement was first made, apparently without the knowledge of people who should be in the new, including his own defense minister at that time, Manohar Parikar, including the foreign secretary, including the IMF. And after having made the announcement, you then try and justify everything post fact. Then you get the entire process in place. And lastly, I think what is significant is what we found and not our salon. Everybody's found this particularly notable is that how is it that a corporate group with no prior experience of manufacturing defense equipment, including fighter aircraft, a group which was bankrupt, steeped in debt, how is it that half the deal, which was roughly 60,000 crore, and we saw that half of the deal, the offsets part of it, was given to this particular group, namely the ADAG, the Anil Dhruvai Ambani group headed by Mr. Anil Ambani. And last but not the least, I think what this book tries to do is how we saw institutions that are meant to serve as institutions that provide checks and balances for all high value acquisitions of capital equipment, how they chose not to look at what was staring at them in the face. And that includes the Supreme Court of India, the highest court of the country, and a constitutional body called the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. And one last point, what was particularly astonishing, and I should say it really is mind boggling, is how an unsigned document was given in a sealed envelope which contained lies. And this was followed by the Supreme Court, the apex court at that time, the Chief Justice of India was Mr. Gokoe, Ranjan Gokoe, how he completely swallowed those lies that were put out and later on the government had to correct the judgment. Request for the correction. That's right. Of the judgment. Let me add, it was not a note, unsigned note, it was bullet points. That's right. It was bullet points given in a sealed envelope to the Supreme Court, not signed, no date. Probably they didn't want the officers to be persecuted for perjury. So that's why. Let me add here, when you asked about the money trail and you said that in the case of Baphors, there was a money trail established. In the case of Baphors, Swedish radio leaked it. Here, there's an investigation right now going on in France. In France, which we don't know yet. And as per the last information, we tried to put a small piece of that in the book. As per the last available information, the investigating authority tried to raid the SOFIS and Ministry of External Affairs that and it was stopped, citing, they were blocked, citing national security and foreign relations. Other aspect to the money trail, it is very clear and obvious that there's a very infamous power broker or arms broker, arms dealer involvement in the entire deal. Sushen Mohan Gupta. This person who was booked in the Augusta Westland case and he was in jail for almost two and a half months, released on bail. And in this case, even after his involvement was very clearly put into public domain, the government didn't touch. The biggest question here is if the government is clear that nothing is wrong with the deal, they did everything perfect as per the law, as per the laid down procedures. There is no money trailing board. Why the government is skeptical or scared to order an investigation? According to Mr. Prashant Bhushan, Arun Shauri and Mr. Yashwant Sinha who filed the petition to the court. Before that, they went to the CBI. And soon after that. And when they said that the CBI director, the then CBI director, decided to start a preliminary investigation on that day. We can only summarize. Because what happened is after the petition was given by Prashant Bhushan, Arun Shauri and Yashwant Sinha to the then director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, Alok Verma, soon after that, there was a most unusual development, literally a midnight coup. In the middle of the night, his office was locked. So we can sort of connect the dots and make these in a sense. Other than that, there was no reason for the government to remove the then CBI director. There was no other reason at all. Though the government claims that it was his fight with his deputy, Mr. Sinha. Let me put this another way. We have known not only in the Rafale case, but in many other instances of governance in this government, that it is a rule by administrative fiat, if you like, and a presidential form of governance, rather than a cabinet form of governance with checks and balances and so on. This is run like a presidential system where the White House is the executive authority and that's how those government runs. And we've seen that. In a number of cases, a defense, even though it may not be stated in so many words in this case, I think from the government side throughout has been. Yes, the government took an executive decision and which proves how determined and strong this government is that it does not allow red tape to come in the way of firm decision making in the interests of the nation. That I think is the stated or unstated? No, it's stated in fact. In a democracy, one man is not the government. We are an electoral democracy. The parliamentary democracy. Exactly. In this case, immediately after the announcement of the Prime Minister from Paris on 10th April 2015, in the next two weeks, we have detailed it in the book. If you just observe what the then Defense Minister Manohar Parikar, late Manohar Parikar said in every single interview, whether it's to Durdarshan, whether it's to CNBC, whether it's to NDTV, whether it's to Azthak, India Today Group, he was categorical. This was a decision by a strong leader and this was an outcome of the discussion between the Indian Prime Minister, that is Narendra Modi and the then French President, François Hollande. So very subjection balances. He decided. I can just add something here. In the launch of the, when we launched the book on Monday, the 5th of December at the Constitution Club here in New Delhi, we had as one of the speakers, the retired colonel of the Indian army, Ajay Shukla. We've quoted him extensively in the book because he's also featured on Newsclake and he made a very important revelation. He said, I'm saying this for the first time. Mr. Parikar is no more with us. He's passed on. He said there was a person who was with Mr. Parikar on a particular day when he got a telephone call and he was on his way to catch a flight to Goa. That's right. And he went back to the PMO and he says, and this is Mr. Ajay Shukla telling us, Colonel Ajay Shukla telling us that he was shocked. I mean, his face was- Your book uses the phrase, he came back, ashen face. That's right, that's right. That's right. So the Defense Minister of the country is having an idea about the earlier deals getting scrapped and a new one is being announced, exactly a week prior to Prime Minister's announcement. This was happened on 3rd April. That's right. Another example of what we can cite here is that whenever the Prime Minister travelled abroad on official visits, there's a customary press briefing by the foreign secretary. He'll explain to the media, the press, the customary of the itinerary of the Prime Minister's visit and what he's going to discuss, what are the topics he'll meet home. All these things are explained to the media because these are pre-decided. He's a Prime Minister of the country. In this case, just two days prior to Prime Minister's visit to Paris and the three countries, the then foreign secretary Dr. S. J. Shankar, who is now of the external affairs minister, briefed the press on that particular press meet. There were three questions raised on Rafale, the deal, whether the Prime Minister will be announcing a new deal. He categorically said no because the Prime Minister's visit don't go into these small issues like this and of course, it is not going to happen and the discussions are on with HL, Ministry of Defense, the SOE and other various set up who are involved in this. They announced one decision. So, given this narrative from the government, that we took a decision, bold decision was taken in national interest because there was an emergency requirement for aircraft. There were all kinds of delays earlier. So, we took this decision. Your book contains a series of interviews scattered across the different chapters with leading military figures, retired people, sitting, serving officers, the strategic analysts and defense commentators. What is your take after all these interviews that you have had? Was the national interest in defense served by this decision? Shall I respond? Yeah. So, I'll add on later. Yeah, you add on. We believe the contrary happened, that the national interest was not served, that the country's security environment was weakened by this deal. As you have rightly pointed out, we have quoted several experts serving and retired, those who spoke to us on the record, those who spoke to us off the record. One of the last chapters of the book contains a detailed interview with Retired Marshal Rahunath Nambiar, where it takes more than 30 pages, about almost 35, 43 pages. When we ask him a point of question, now he knew about the deal very well. He had audited that deal and he tried to give a spin to the fact saying there was nothing wrong, that this whole defense procurement procedure was an impediment in speedy acquisition. But there again, within the armed forces, there are well-laid-down rules for emergency acquisition, none of that was followed. So, in the interest of fairness, the reader should judge what Amashal Rahunath Nambiar has said, because he supports the deal, whereas we have argued to the contrary and let them arrive at their own conclusion, because we believe that the national interest was not served. I'll add on. I'll tell you why the national... Can I just add to that, so that you take this into account as well. The original RFP, the request for proposal was for 126 fighter aircraft and this was not a number pulled out of the hat by the Indian Air Force. It came after a very long study. The RFP itself is a very detailed document, spelt out the kind of aircraft and the numbers which was to take into account the next 10, 20 years of development of the Air Force. Today, we've got 36 aircraft, not the 126. Then you suddenly had a request for information calling for another 114 or 110 aircraft. Nothing has happened in all these years on that. Precisely, that is what I was about to say. Which means that this 36 is going to leave a huge gap in the teeth of your jaw if there are 100-odd aircraft missing. In fact, we've argued it's more problems. That's right. And not likely to come. So, take that into account. See, this 126 aircraft requirement was proposed in 2000. That's 22 years ago. This deal was announced in 2015. That is 15 years after that 126 aircrafts requirement was first moved in. And the government says that this is an emergency procurement. So, to say it's an emergency procurement, then what was the operating squadron strength on that time? And what is now? After you are bringing in 36 aircrafts in flyaway condition, what is the operational strength? And even in this 36, the so-called India-specific enhancements that the IAF especially needed, just not there. It's only there in one and it's under testing now. It will take some more time to incorporate all these add-ons to the other 35. As of now, as per one of the senior Air Force officers, the current operational fleet strength is anywhere from 28 to 29. That's right. Just because of that, the age-old fleet of MiG-21, they're going to operate till 2025. That's right. In 2017, they issued a new RFI, cancelled it. Re-shoot another one in 2018 and it's still at the RFI stage. That's right. There is no RFP. So, when the cancel, when the cancel, when the cancel the previous deal, they said that this is lagging on since so many years. So, we have to start a new process. So, this new process, how many years it's going to take? That's right. So, by the time it comes in, other than LCA, even with all the best intentions, if a new process is initiated now, it will take a long time, five to six years for it to even begin. Now, the government supporters can argue that the government already placed the order for 80 light combat aircraft that it stages. But as of now, the production capacity of HCL for LCA is only six aircrafts per year. That is one point of it. Now, when we look at the segmentation of these aircrafts, that is why the Indian Air Force wanted MMRC. I mean, that's the medium multi-role combat aircraft. If I can just add one point, let's assume for the time being that even if the deal was 90% done, that last 10% proved to be a huge problem and the last mile was just not happening. It was taking too long. Let's assume there's a huge trust deficit between the Indian Air Force and Hindustan Aeronautics. You have worked with HCL, so you know. So, let's assume all these things. Even if you assume all these things, this was just not the way to go about it. The sheer arbitrariness, the sheer decision taken by one man. And one other point I wanted to make, we have shown in our book that there were people within the Defense Ministry. There were people within the Ministry of Law and Justice who opposed different aspects of the government. But we were bargaining from a very weak position. So, whether it be the anti-corruption clauses or the seat of arbitration, we all eventually gave in to what the French wanted. And the other point that we make in this book is the role of the National Security Advisor, Ms. Tajid Dawal in this entire episode. Theoretically, you should have had nothing to do with this. But what we so show, there is enough evidence. There is enough documentary evidence and circumstantial evidence which points to that direction. I want to make one last point. This book is about 560 pages. It's got annexures. It's got a chronology. It's got an index. It's got... We have used information which is in the public domain. In case somebody says you are violating the Official Secrets Act, we have given references to each and every bit of information that you put. What we've tried to do is connect the dots. Yeah. Last question. Again, to do with the national interests. As you have narrated throughout the book, brought out in many interviews that you've done, once that decision was taken to order the Rafals, then any interviews you did with sitting officials, military officials, people in the press who were trying to defend the government's position were, as you said, post facto rationalizations. And in doing so, and I think all these interviews that you've got in your book show this, people tripping over themselves, because at one point, in speaking to you, he gives one excuse. In speaking to you, he gives another, then he realizes there's a contradiction, so he gives a third. So this comes out very clearly in this, but one of the key arguments used for abandoning the RFP and going in for this emergency procurement was there were problems with Hindustan aeronautics. HAL could not strike the deal with Dassault. I understand the question. Let me answer that. Yeah. Just let me finish it for the benefit of the viewers, that because HAL was incompetent, inefficient, incapable, therefore it is better that HAL be abandoned and a process goes where we give the contract to Dassault, who is free to hire or link up with any private partner. This was a running thread in the government's dispensary. Raghu, we managed to access the original RFP, 2007 original RFP, which you've cited in many places. Yes, we have completely analyzed it took almost eight months for, because I'm not a technical person, so I had to seek the help of different people in the know-how, in the air force, retired and some working, they helped me a lot in this. It very clearly states that anyone who is participating for this RFP and submitting the code, they should be ready to work with HAL. That is one. Before submitting the code, they should go and assess HAL's capabilities. If you are not okay with this, your codes will be rejected. It was very clear in the RFP. Now after becoming L1, if Dassault says that they can't work with HAL, if they can't work with HAL, the government should have penalized as per the RFP, government should have heavily penalized Dassault and should have banned them for a few years. Actually Dassault was doing arm twisting. It was very clearly stated in the RFP that Dassault should give guarantee for 126 aircrafts. And after becoming the lowest bidder and becoming the winner of the bid, then coming up with this clause, the government should have banned them then itself in 2014 itself. They didn't do that. That's one part of it. Now second, when government officials and the ruling party members, when they say that this is why the deal collapsed, it's tough to swallow as it is. The reason is on 25th March, Eric Trappier, the Dassault chairman of March 2015, 15 days prior to prime minister's announcement from France, Dassault chairman, then CEO, now chairman and CEO, Eric Trappier, he praises HAL like, I mean, his experience with HAL that he was working with HAL since the early 90s and they were sold earlier. But he, Trappier, they have a very cordial relationship and their efficiency, I mean, he was praising about HAL's efficiency. And he was doing all this on the record, in front of senior HAL officials, the then Indian ambassador to France and senior government officials. We put out the video in public domain of this in 2019. It's still available there. So if government says that the source reluctance to work with HAL was the reason, that's not acceptable. That's one. Second, much later, after all these things, in 2018-19, in an interview with CNVZ-TV18, Eric Trappier reiterates the same. He says that he had no problem with HAL. So then what happened? He categorically said, you should ask your government. We had no problem. So clearly, Raghu, somebody is not telling you the whole truth. That's right. I mean, somebody is covering up. That's right. And these become excuses to justify a new deal that was announced. And then HAL chairman Sonaraju was categorical. When this allegations came that HAL's incapabilities, the recent and all this, when Mrs. Narmala Sitalaman, the current finance minister and the defense minister said, that Mrs. Sonaraju was very clear. He challenged. He said, make the world share the world share public public. And the government hasn't done it. No. I try to speak to Mr. Sonaraju to take more details. He said that he's under pressure. He cannot say. That's fair enough. Reservations, yeah. In being able to speak. A last question. Your book has brought this entire story up to a point. We know all the denials, the obfuscation. It's reached a dead end with the courts. It's reached a dead end with the CAG and so on. Where do we go from here? And is there a prospect tomorrow or the day after of the reality behind the Rafale deal surfacing once again? Paranjeev. I think that's a difficult question to answer. What happens in France? Only time can tell. As Ravi earlier pointed out, when the prosecutor's office sought to examine the documents with the French government, they were denied it. Now, how far that investigation will go? We cannot guess or second guess. What we know is even in France, there's clearly been a considerable amount of pressure on the investigating authority. And we have detailed that in the book, how individuals move from one place to the other and influence the. That's correct. So, I think depending on how the political establishment influence the judiciary. And depending on what information comes out from there and if at all there is some damaging information, then it would influence what will happen in India. Even during the review petition, the one judge, they all agreed, all the three judges agreed, but one judge, Justice Joseph, K.M. Joseph said, there is actually nothing even today preventing the CBI, the Central Bureau of Investigation from going ahead. They have to follow certain norms because the Prevention of Corruption Act has been changed, but there's nothing really preventing CBI from going ahead. I'll add one more thing. What happened in the case of before's deal is the continuous investigation by the Hindu and the Swedish journalists, your N. Ram and Chitra Subramaniam led that. Right now, what is happening is that the self-life of the new cycles, it's a day or two because every day something new comes up and people forget the older thing. We started our investigation way back in 2017 and we are still on to it. We are trying our best and we believe if at all, if this government changes in 2024, if another government comes in, they will open the file. Let us hope so. Well, on that somewhat optimistic note, let me say that the story of Rafale may or may not unfold to reveal the truth in the months and years to follow, but the ramifications of the decision to change from the old RFP request for 126 fighter jets to 36 Rafales, the ramifications of that decision is already impacting and will continue to impact on the Indian Air Force and on India's defense preparedness in the years to come.