An expose by Indian daily The Hindu has revealed that the Modi government held negotiations with its French counterpart parallel to the ones held by the Indian Defence Ministry.
Taking to Twitter, former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah said that he would like to see how those aligned with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would explain reports that the Defence Ministry had protested over the mechanism being adopted by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) for the Rafale deal.
News agency ANI has accessed the then defence minister Manohar Parrikar's reply to the Ministry of Defence's dissent note on Rafale negotiations, where Parrikar says that "para 5 appears to be an overreaction."
Reacting to this, Abdullah said, "How can he claim that "para 5 is an over-reaction" when he had no direct knowledge of the status or content of the negotiations? His act of passing the matter for the Def Sec to resolve with PMO clearly shows he had no grounds on which to base his "over-reaction" assessment."
How can he claim that para 5 is an over-reaction when he had no direct knowledge of the status or content of the negotiations? His act of passing the matter for the Def Sec to resolve with PMO clearly shows he had no grounds on which to base his over-reaction assessment.
Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) February 8, 2019
Abdullah had tagged a document, purportedly of the Defence Ministry, which was published as part of a news report by The Hindu.
According to the article, the ministry had raised strong objections to "parallel negotiations" conducted by the PMO with the French side.
"I'd like to see how this one is explained by the talking heads aligned to the BJP. @PMOIndia 'weakened the negotiating position of the Ministry of Defence & the Indian Negotiating Team' as per this note in a MOD file that went up the Defence Minister," the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister claimed.
I’d like to see how this one is explained by the talking heads aligned to the BJP. @PMOIndia weakened the negotiating position of the Ministry of Defence & the Indian Negotiating Team as per this note in a MOD file that went up the the Defence Minister. pic.twitter.com/xnqXM4s8Mr
Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) February 8, 2019
The National Conference was an ally of NDA when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the prime minister but shifted to UPA-II in 2009.
http://bit.ly/2TFsIGW
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