THE Congress Party has learnt the subtle art of deflecting all blame related to scams during its tenure by a series of filibusters. When the infamous 3-G Telecom scam relating to sale of spectrum which led to a loss of a whopping Rs 1.76 lakh crore,first broke out, the Congress party ducked for cover and called it a ‘notional’ loss that was in the realm of speculation. This was followed by the Coalgate scam where coal blocs were auctioned off for negligible amounts. The 3-G scam was prised open following a leak from the CAGs office then led by Vinod Rai. The Congress party remains unfazed by these scams. The latest to be unearthed is the Agusta-Westland helicopter deal involving a middleman who regularly bribed key people in the Indian Defence establishment including the then Chief of the Air Force, SP Tyagi, media persons and other key political leaders.
In a fit of bravado, Congress Party leaders have risen to defend the Nehru-Gandhi family despite their being mentioned by Christian Michel, the middleman as ‘The Family’ in his list of people who needed to be paid. To counter the Congress’s claim of innocence, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has said that he would place the detailed chronology about the VVIP Chopper scam before Parliament . The Congress had been trying to corner the Union Government for allowing the tainted AgustaWestland to take part in the ‘Make in India’ initiative and the Defence Expo. At this point it is more important for the country to know who in the UPA dispensation had received the alleged kickbacks in the AgustaWestland chopper deal. There are far too many scams in this country which have never been successfully unearthed and have been used as a tool to punish political rivals instead. Although a case has been registered by CBI against former IAF chief S P Tyagi and 12 others, including his cousins, for alleged cheating, corruption and criminal conspiracy in the Rs 3,600 crore VVIP helicopter deal, in which Rs 360 crore is alleged to have been paid as kickbacks, the country is entitled to know who has compromised the security of this country for a fistful of dollars. The Rs 64 crore Bofors scam that singed the Rajiv Gandhi government, finally saw Ottavio Quattrochi the middleman exit the country unfazed. We hope the Agusta-Westland deal does not reach a similar dead-end.