NEW DELHI: Former minister of state for defense Arun Singh and the then chief of army staff general Krishnaswami Sundarji, had suggested that the government should go to the extent of canceling the Bofors gun contract to force the armaments firm to come out with the names of the recipients of the whopping commissions given to clinch the 1.3 billion dollar deal.
The opinion of the attorney general also ran on similar lines, Indian premier Singh told the Lok Sabha.
However, Rajiv Gandhi, while appreciating the feelings of Arun Singh wanted to know if the former minister of state for defense had evaluated the actual position vis-a-vis defense. He also wanted to determine if the financial loss of a cancellation had been evaluated.
In the minute recorded on Arun Singh’s note suggesting the possibility of cancellation of the Bofors contract, Gandhi had said “what we need to do is to get to the roots and find out what precisely has been happening and who all are involved.”
Rajiv Gandhi and Congress I members, who had heard V.P. Singh’s statement without interruption, accused him of going back on his commitment to place all the files concerning Bofors on the table.
They demanded that no other business should be taken up till the Prime Minister placed on the table all files relating to Bofors.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 5, 1990
