Congress misinformed and misled: Anil Ambani refutes Rafale allegations

The chairman of Reliance Group, Anil Ambani, denied allegations made by Congress President Rahul Gandhi that his firm will benefit by “thousands of crores” with the signing of the defence offset contract between France’s Dassault Aviation SA and Reliance Defence.

In a letter sent to Rahul Gandhi last week, Ambani said the Congress has been “misinformed, misdirected and misled” by vested interests and corporate rivals on the Rafale offset exports and work share. Calling all the allegations as “baseless, ill-informed and unfortunate”, Ambani also expressed his deep anguish over continued personal attacks against him by Rahul Gandhi.

The Congress had alleged that rules related to defence ministry approvals and audits were ignored in the offset contracts between Dassault and Reliance even as the government ignored public sector unit, Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL), which had won the earlier contract. An offset contract requires a foreign manufacturer that wins a defence contract in India to spend a certain portion of the deal value locally to promote local manufacturing.

The agreement to buy 36 Rafale jets was signed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the French government in 2016, after an earlier agreement to buy 126 aircraft was scrapped by the Modi government soon after coming to power in 2014. Rahul Gandhi has repeatedly accused Modi and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman of not divulging the purchase price of Rafale aircraft and favouring Ambani’s Reliance Defence.