A day after BJP MP Bhupendra Yadav gave a Calling Attention notice to raise the issue in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday and party's Lok Sabha MP Meenakshi Lekhi raised the issue during the Zero Hour on Monday demanding a probe, Congress rejected all allegations.
In the face of revelations in an Italy court order over the 2013 Augusta VVIP chopper deal that puts the UPA and its senior leaders Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi under scanner, political blame game between the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress has found fresh momentum.
A day after BJP MP Bhupendra Yadav gave a Calling Attention notice to raise the issue in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday and party's Lok Sabha MP Meenakshi Lekhi raised the issue during the Zero Hour on Monday demanding a probe, Congress rejected all allegations.
"It was UPA that cancelled contract with Augusta, we blacklisted the company, we lodged case in Italy, we confiscated helicopters," Congress leader Anand Sharma told reporters here. "The BJP government allowed Augusta to bid for projects in Indian Navy. Modi, when he met Italian PM in New York, invited Agusta for Make in India," Sharma said.
Even as the 225-page judgment of the appeal court in Milan on April 6, described how the firm paid bribes to top Congress leaders and lobbied to bag the Rs3,600-crore deal, Sharma said that the "decision to alter requirement of helicopter that flies at 6000 metre was taken in 2003. Process of altitude change started in NDA Govt".
Augusta heat is freshly preceded by the political and legal row in Uttarakhand and the slanging match between the BJP and Congress over the Ishrat Jehan encounter case.
The Italy court judgment that sentenced the Italian defence firm Finmeccanica's former chief Giuseppe Orsi to jail for four years and former CEO of Finmeccanica's UK-based helicopter subsidiary AgustaWestland in the case, also suggests that the then UPA government did not cooperate with the Italian probe team. Notes in the order copy pointed that Sonia Gandhi is the "driving force" behind the deal.
Manmohan Singh's name too figures in the order and details that Orsi, by then already in jail, asked his men to contact then Italian Prime Minister Monti or Ambassador Teracciano to call Manmohan Singh.
The then defence minister and congress leader AK Antony, meanwhile, said that the UPA had already instituted an inquiry and cancelled the contract and that it was for the BJP to expedite the probe.
Even as the Italy court has pronounced judgments, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in India are still probing the case. The ED booked then Indian Air force Chief SP Tyagi and his relatives along with four other European Nationals and firms -- Finmeccanica, AugustaWestland besides Chandigarh- based IDS Infotech and Aeromatrix, and two companies based in Mauritius and Tunisia whose names figured in the CBI complaint. While Tyagi, his cousins and others are, according to the complaint involved in taking kickbacks worth Rs 423 crore to award the deal, ED has booked five properties in Delhi and nearby that belonged to him and his relatives.
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