Kalam missive tears down George’s claim

Rajesh Sinha & Kay Benedict

NEW DELHI: Former defence minister George Fernandes, who has received little support from his political colleagues after being accused of wrongdoing in the acquisition of the Barak anti-missile system, faced a further setback on Wednesday.

The emergence of a letter written in 1999 by APJ Abdul Kalam to express his opposition to the Barak deal has contradicted Fernandes’s claim that the purchase was approved by the former.

Kalam was the Prime Minister’s scientific adviser in that period. In the letter, he informed Fernandes that the missile system had a 50 per cent failure rate during trials.

On Tuesday, when the CBI filed a first information report against Fernandes, charging him with impropriety in the acquisition dating back to 2000, he tried to impute the blame to Kalam. The former minister had defiantly suggested that the investigation begin with Kalam’s role.

“Kalam said this [missile system] is needed and that is how it came,” Fernandes said. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t have come.”

But the letter seems to refute Fernandes’s assertion. “Even the cost-of-failure analysis by foreign suppliers is very high,” Kalam wrote in the letter.

 “We will be at the mercy of foreign suppliers for spares and support during the lifecycle of the entire system.”

Kalam also said the import of any missile system would take one to two years, and that there was “no reason that Trishul cannot be made ready before that”.

The revelation has made it more difficult for Fernandes’s colleagues to defend him. The BJP did, however, issue a three-paragraph statement on Wednesday criticising the CBI for being a politicised organisation. The statement also dismissed the case against Fernandes as politically motivated.

That assessment, the BJP said, was borne out by the CBI’s handling of the case against Railway Minister Lalu Prasad.

The party accused the Congress of pursuing vindictive politics and cited instances such as the alleged coffin scandal and the cases relating to actor Amitabh Bachchan as evidence. The BJP also pointed out that the UPA government “has itself ordered seven more Barak missile systems”.

There was no reaction from the Janata Dal United. The party’s president, Sharad Yadav, was away and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has said nothing after his initial statement expressing confidence in Fernandes’s integrity.

Reactions from both parties seemed to be based on the need to adhere to form, rather than being spurred by conviction. By criticising the NDA government in Bihar, Fernandes has not endeared himself to the BJP.

On Wednesday, he left for Bihar for a meeting with fellow dissidents from the JD(U). There is speculation that Fernandes, sidelined by his own party, might seek to revive his Samata Party.