He also pointed to how the scam and the resultant controversy had led to defence procurement being affected with the Indian Army not being able to buy new artillery guns for almost three decades.
While President Pranab Mukherjee's remarks about the Bofors scam being a "media trial" which the courts failed to establish have raised dust in political and diplomatic circles, defence minister Manohar Parrikar said that had Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi been tried, the extent of the corruption would have been known.
He also pointed to how the scam and the resultant controversy had led to defence procurement being affected with the Indian Army not being able to buy new artillery guns for almost three decades.
"Bofors is a good gun... (I) don't think the quality of the product and corruption are synonymous," noted Parrikar, who was speaking at a programme organised by the Indian Merchants Chamber (IMC) on the 'Make in India' programme for defence production. He pointed to how the 155 MM field Howitzers purchased from Swedish manufacturer Bofors AB had proved useful in the Kargil war.
"But a good gun does not mean (that there was) no corruption," said the former Goa chief minister, adding that had Quattrocchi been tried, we would have known about it. He also pointed to how the Indian artillery had not been able to purchase guns for around 31 years because of the controversy. Quattrocchi, who died in 2013, was known for his proximity to the Gandhi family.
However, Parrikar added that new artillery guns would be inducted from 2015 onwards with the 155 MM, 45-calibre Dhanush artillery guns being inducted with six of these guns being inducted this year and being produced on mass scale by ordinance factories or private players from 2016 onwards.
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