PM wants to fix Cong leaders in chopper case: Ramesh

Stepping up offensive against the government, Congress on Thursday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi with pursuing a single-point agenda to fix its top leaders in the AgustaWestland case.

The Congress charge comes against the backdrop of BJP’s attempts to link Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi to the alleged kickbacks given to swing the VVIP choppers deal in favour of Italian defence supplier.

Rahul is expected to respond to the BJP allegations when the Lok Sabha discusses AgustaWestland issue on Friday. “It is clear that Narendra Modi and Amit Shah want to fix the Congress leadership in the AgustaWestland scam,” Congress spokesman Jairam Ramesh told reporters here.

Top Congress leaders, including Sonia, Rahul and former prime minister Manmohan Singh will hit the streets on Friday and march to Parliament as part of the ‘Save Democracy’ campaign to protest against the government’s attempts to “topple” elected state governments, assault on universities, bypassing standing committees of parliament among other issues.

“This is a systematic attack on democracy by the Modi government,” Ramesh said.
Congress virtually accused Modi of reaching out to Italian Prime Minister Mateo Renzi for a quid pro quo deal on to release the marines facing trial in exchange of information to fix Congress leaders in the VVIP chopper case.

“The government had only clarified that there was no bilateral meeting. We are not referring to a bilateral meeting. There are other meetings such as brush off meeting, a tea meeting or a coffee meeting. There was a ‘Chhoti si Mulaqat,” Ramesh said.
“Modi has a single-point agenda to fix the Congress leadership,” he said demanding a Supreme Court-monitored inquiry into the AgustaWestland deal.

The then UPA government had initiated inquiries by the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate into the allegations of kickbacks. The probe by the two agencies is continuing, but Congress now fears that the government could “influence” the process.