New Delhi:
Ten days before the Budget session of Parliament begins, the opposition has been handed a new controversy to attack the Congress-led UPA government with and the BJP has quickly termed the Italian chopper deal now under a cloud as the "second Bofors scam".
The main opposition party has made clear that it will raise the issue in Parliament and will ask tough questions. "There was one gentleman Ottavio Quattrochhi from Italy who was involved in the Bofors scam. Several attempts were made to protect him. This helicopter company is also from Italy. Was this a factor in no probe being done in the matter for the past one year?" said the BJP's Ravi Shankar Prasad. The Bofors case dates back to the 1990s when there were allegations of kickbacks in a deal for artillery guns during the Congress regime of Rajiv Gandhi.
The government is on the backfoot after the CEO of the Italian defence giant Finmeccanica was arrested for allegedly offering bribes in India to land a contract for the sale of 12 Agusta Westland helicopters. Defence Minister AK Antony has promised that if a CBI inquiry ordered into the deal turns up any evidence of malpractice, the contract will be cancelled and the Italian firm blacklisted. But the government is also firm that it will only act as per the law.
"Whatever has to be done by law should be done and I don't think that we should do anything that is done to please the Opposition or because somebody puts pressure on us," External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said, also reminded the BJP that most of the allegations in the Bofors case were rejected by the Supreme Court. He asked the parties to provide him "The final conclusions of the Bofors case and then I would say you are right."
"Clearly, many of the allegations that were made in Bofors were finally thrown out of court not by one jurisdiction but by many jurisdictions - in India by the high court, Supreme Court and in several jurisdictions of the world," he said.
The BJP has raised the issue of corruption and scams against the UPA government over several sessions of Parliament. But its attack was considerably blunted in recent months by corruption charges piling up against its own president Nitin Gadkari. Mr Gadkari was forced to opt out of an unprecedented second term as party chief by an income tax investigation into his businesses and Rajnath Singh was appointed the BJP chief last month.
Mr Singh has made clear that corruption will remain a key election agenda of the BJP as it prepares for general elections in 2014.