'Completely baseless', says BJP on Rafale bribe allegations

Prasad suggested that a report about the alleged financial irregularity may be due to "corporate rivalry"

The BJP on Monday rejected as “completely baseless” the allegations of corruption in the Rafale deal suggesting that reports in the French media in this regard could be on account of "corporate rivalry" in that country.

On Congress’s demand for a fresh investigation into the bribery allegations, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the Opposition party had made the Rafale deal an election issue in 2019 and lost badly.

Read | Cong rakes up Rafale deal amid fresh bribery allegation

“The Congress is raising the Rafale issue again. It lost in the Supreme Court. They campaigned in the 2019 polls on the Rafale issue, threw all kinds of abuses at the prime minister and still lost. How many seats did it get? ” Prasad asked.

He said that Sushen Gupta, the middleman whose name has figured in the report by the French media outlet on the Rafale deal, was arrested in the AgustaWestland case by the Enforcement Directorate in 2019.

The Congress on Monday renewed its attack on the Modi government over alleged irregularities in the Rafale deal after a French media outlet claimed that aircraft makers paid one million euros to alleged middlemen after finalising the fighter jet deal with India.