New Delhi : With Congress Party on Sunday terming the controversy over the AgustaWestland helicopter deal as ‘false propaganda’ aimed to malign its top leadership, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made a retaliatory strike, saying the people want to know as to where the ‘bribe money has gone’.
“This is all false propaganda, just to defame Congress Party and our top leadership. This is because the elections are going on and they don’t have their own achievements to tell the people and just to hide their failure, these things are being done,” senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge told ANI.
Assailing the Centre for delaying the probe in the alleged corruption in the VVIP chopper deal, Kharge asked the Modi Government as to who is preventing them probing the matter?
“Even the CBI inquiry was instituted during previous UPA regime and why they didn’t complete the matter in past two years?” he asked.
Hinting that the entire episode is aimed to gain political mileage, Kharge said the Congress leaders have already affirmed that the accusations are totally false and malicious and are targeted at character assassination.
“Unfortunately Arun Jaitley ji condemned the interview which a reputed newspaper has published, which itself shows that they want to make much noise without any content,” he added.
Meanwhile, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra hit back at the grand old party saying the entire nation wants to know the truth behind the AgustaWestland deal.
“Way back in 2013, when we were discussing these deals and even then the Bharatiya Janata Party had raised pertinent questions and had pointed fingers towards the then UPA president and the driving force of UPA, that was Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and today when appellate court of Milan has delivered its judgement, where the name of Sonia Gandhi ji is and name of the advisors of the UPA chairperson, so definitely the nation wants to know as to where the money has gone and who are the one’s who received the bribes,” Patra told ANI.
Patra further said that since the investigative bodies are probing the matter the truth would be in front of the nation sooner or later.
“And the ones who have erred will be facing the law of the land,” he added.
AgustaWestland’s Rs 3,600 crore contract for supplying 12 VVIP choppers to the Indian Air Force had been scrapped by the Indian Government over charges of paying kickbacks to Indian agents.
In January 2013, India cancelled the deal and the CBI was assigned to investigate whether kickbacks were paid to Indian officials. (ANI)