Rafale deal: Rahul Gandhi reiterates demand for JPC probe despite SC's refusal to intervene

Hours after Supreme Court ruled out a probe into the pricing details of the Rafale deal, Congress president Rahul Gandhi in a hurriedly organised press conference criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said Why there was no Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the Rafale deal.

Accusing the government of renogitiating the deal to help a private firm, the Congress president said and added Rafale jets are being procured at an inflated rate.  

''Our basic question is how the price of each aircraft has gone up to Rs 1,600 crore from Rs 526 crore,'' he said.

''How can it be possible that the foundation of SC judgement saying that pricing has been discussed in CAG report.PAC chairman (M Kharge) is sitting here, how come he never saw it. No one in PAC ever saw it. But Supreme Court saw it,'' he said.  

Rahul asked the government to disclose the CAG report on the Rafale deal. 

In its judgement, SC says CAG report on Rafale deal was given to Parliament's Public Accounts Committee. But PAC has not received report, he said.

''Govt will have to explain to us where is the CAG report. Show it to PAC chairman Kharge ji. Maybe a different PAC is running parallelly, maybe in a different Parliament, maybe in the Parliament of France. It's possible Modi ji has constituted his own PAC in PMO,'' Rahul charged.

Alleging commercial favouritism in the deal, he said there was no secrecy code as claimed by the government.