WSN BUREAU NEW DELHI: Opposition has announced that it will launch a nationwide stir in the wake of the sensational disclosures by the former chief of Indian army, General Krishnaswamy Sunderji who said that he had categorically recommended the cancellation of the Bofors contract as early as June 1987 to pressurize the company to extract details of the $40 million payofis of the $1.37 billion contract and that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had resisted this advice.

Sunderji’s revelations have considerably embarrassed the government which had steadfastly maintained that they did not use the threat of cancellation of the contract for the purchase of artillery guns on his very advice.

Janata Dal spokesman Satpal Malik told newsmen on September4 that Sunderji had now “opened his heart like a true soldier.”

Arun Singh the former defense minister of state had resigned because of the same issue. The prime minister should also resign, he added, saying that the details of the nationwide stir to focus the attention of the people on the Bofors kickbacks would be announced soon.

In an interview with the fortnightly India Today extracts of which were published prominently in major Indian newspapers on

Sept 2 General Sunderji had said that he had stated in writing in June 1987 that the government should threaten to cancel the contract, 14 month after it was signed, if Bofors did not reveal the names of the people who received the payoffs.

“I urged that we should threaten to cancel the Bofors contract to extract the payoff details,” General Sunderji said in an interview. He said he believed that financial pressure was the only way to force Bofors to reveal the details. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on Sept 3 dismissed the charges as “not at all The former chief said that the then minister of state of defence Arun Singh who was considered a close confidant of Rajiv Gandhi was also in the favor of canceling the contract and had asked the then joint secretary of Defence Ministry, N.N Vohra to put pressure on the Bofors. Vohra pleaded with Rajiy to put off the deal but the Prime Minister went ahead with it, Gen Sunderji said.

Arun Singh, who was widely regarded as a competent and honest man, resigned less than two weeks later. He has never discussed his resignation publicly.

Gandhi’s fiancé minister V.P. Singh who started investigating Bofors kickbacks in late 1986 was shifted to defence ministry to stop the investigation. However, as defence minister he resigned on April 12, 1987, after he was criticized for investigating the 7% commission allegedly paid in the $358 million 1981 deal to purchase West German submarines. He alleged that the $25 million commission was paid to the Hinduaja brothers, expatriate Indians with close connections with Rajiv’s mother Indira Gandhi and other prominent Congress I leaders.

Singh, now the leader of opposition, sent a letter to President R. Venkatraman, advising him to ask for the resignation of Rajiv Gandhi.

The Bharitya Janata party in a statement released on Sept 2 said that General Sunderji’s revelations had clinched the Bofors issue in the manner in which not even the Comptroller and Auditor General’s grave indictment of the government did.

It pointed out that General Sunderji had “squarely blamed Rajiv Gandhi for thwarting the efforts of the Defence Ministry and the army to bring Bofors to the book and to force it to reveal the names of the pay off beneficiaries. The PM had n0 moral right to continue even for a day in the office, it said.

The CPI(M) in a statement said the prime minister could no longer evade the responsibility of shielding the alleged recipients of payoffs. He should immediately resign.

Gandhi while leaving for the nonaligned meet in Balgrade has passed the buck of providing a Statement on the issue to the defense ministry. The ministry is in a flap and is doing all it can to keep the press away.

Article extracted from this publication >>  September 8, 1989