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interview

the respect for India has increased in have won 119 seats. defense deal is done in the Congress
the world. Today, Modi is not just known Shivraj Singh gave a very good fight government without any deal and I can
as the leader of India but also as an au- but Congress government came into say it with full responsibility. Then Modi
thentic Global Leader in the world. power and I congratulate them. Despite ji comes in power and Air Force divulg-
You have questioned, where do we the notion that we will lose the ground es the whole story.
find ourselves after four and a half in Rajasthan, we gave a tight match. The Modi ji told them that there is a pro-
years? The result of elections has been results will be in our favour whenever vision in the manual of the law that the
revealed in three states. We got defeat- Lok Sabha elections take place because head of the state can do an agreement.
ed in Chhattisgarh and we accept that the voters are mature enough, they Thirty-six aircrafts are arriving. There
and we will take it seriously. make wise decisions. are 18 ships in a squadron. Two squad-
If we could have got 1,800 more The era of HD Deve Gowda and rons mean 36 ships are loaded and they
votes, we could have bagged 114 seats Inder Kumar Gujral has passed away. are ready. There is neither Anil Ambani
and from 3,700 to 4,000 votes we could Now the country needs a stable and nor any other person.
strong government formed by BJP. On So the whole ruckus was absolute-
the other hand, the focus is to remove ly baseless. You must have seen that
Modi and for that purpose make a statement of Rafale’s CEO that when
grand alliance. we shall build aircraft in India, we
Schemes like digital India, Saub- shall provide work to 100 people and
hagya Yojna, monetary schemes have
touched the heart of the people and
have led to give more respect to the ‘Remember when we
poor and prosperity of the nation. came to power, the
When the elections will occur, the
people of the country will vote for BJP, country stood on the
Modi and NDA and make them win
with majority. brink of economic
exile. Today, we are
You talked about the defeat of three
states, immediately after that, good ahead of France.
news and relief for the BJP came Our country is being
from the Supreme Court in Rafale
case. The court had clearly said that considered in the
the whole deal was absolutely fair world’s top big
and fine. But there is a mistake. Who
is responsible for that? Is it the fault economic countries’
of the court or the government’s
fault or you blame the opposition?
It’s good that you have raised the issue Ambani is one of them who is getting
of Rafale and people should know it. work of only 800 crores.
For 25 years, the Indian Air Force was What did the Supreme Court do?
not able to get new ships. Countries It looked at the decision-making pro-
like China and Pakistan’s air force is cess and found that it is crystal clear.
very strong. If we could have powerful Secondly, he called for Air Force
ship loaded with missile, then our army officials and also noticed that the planes
officers, soldiers might not have been were required. Thirdly, the court found
martyred in the Kargil War. We could that Rafale is an aircraft of authentic
have won with the help of Air Force. firepower.
In 2001, Atal ji tried to start but we lost He said that this is not our subject
in 2004. No bona fide action was taken but said that there is no commercial
from 2004 to 2012. vested interest in this whole matter.
When tender was launched in 2012, Then he said that we shall not interfere
Dassault, who was the first to create in it for perception. And remember the
Rafale, that was the lowest, was stopped hearing in this case was done for five
later. Who had pressurised to stop times and the last hearing took four to
it and why everybody knows it. No five hours, everybody argued. We ex-

tehelka / 31 january 2019 25 www.tehelka.com