Kolkata: Former Indian Air Force (IAF) chief Air Chief Marshal (retired) Arup Raha has come out with a suggestion of setting up a panel including ruling and opposition parties at the parliament level and hold a “confidential” mee-ting to resolve the controversy over the Rafale aircraft acquisition for the IAF.
According to him, the political dogfight over the defence deal has tarnish-ed the country’s image before the world. Mr Raha was speaking on the sidelines of the two-day long National Seminar and Ex-hibition on ‘Defence Prod-uction: Public Private Partnership — Focus Eas-tern India’ organised by Bharat Chamber of Com-merce which got underway on Friday.
On the slugfest between the Modi government and the Congress Mr Raha said, “This is a political campaign. And such thin-gs take place when there is a big ticket deal. It only gives a dimension in which things get blown out of proportion than what the actual problem is.”
Asked on the Congress’ allegations of each aircraft’s price been hiked three times more than what was in original contract with Dassault Aviat-ion he quipped, “I don’t recall the price now.”
He elaborated, “As a result of this, we are not only losing faith in our system but also losing our esteem before the world. I can not say whether there is anything wrong in it or not because everything is written in the documents. All have been documented.”
Mr Raha added, “My suggestion is that all the stakeholders including the political parties, authorities and the parliament which is also the highest office, should set up a committee and hold a confidential meeting to discuss and resolve the problem. That is my view on it.”
