A K Antony dares Centre on scam

Thiruvananthapuram: Hitting back at BJP for targeting Congress leadership over the AgustaWestland chopper deal, former defence minister A. K. Antony on Saturday dared the Narendra Modi government to take ‘strong’ action against ‘bribe givers and takers.’

Asserting that no names were revealed in the Italian court which convicted former employees of AgustaWestland for giving bribes in the deal, he said, “At every stage in the Italian court, our lawyers represented the case. They cross examined all witnesses.

At no stage, names were revealed. My question is now -CBI is with present government, ED is with present government. Why delay, if there is evidence?" he told reporters here. When asked about BJP launching an all-out attack against Congress on the issue, he said, “Take strong action against bribe givers and bribe takers.”

Sharpening the attack on Congress on the AgustaWestland chopper deal, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitely on Saturday said the theory that the company was blacklisted during the UPA rule and it was lifted by NDA was a "figment of imagination".

Jaitley disputed the statement of former Defence Minister A K Antony that the UPA regime had blacklisted AugustaWestland Finmeccanica after the bribe issue come out on the chopper deal. Targeting Antony, he said the statement given by him to the party suffers from a "misnomer" as much as its mentions that the company was blacklisted by the UPA regime and that it was lifted by the NDA.

"This is a figment of somebody's imagination," Jaitley, a former defence minister, said during an interaction with the audience after releasing the NDA vision document for the May 16 Kerala assembly polls here. He alleged that the decision to award the contract was influenced by bribery.

"The buck stops with those who took the decision and the decision was influenced by bribery. The fact that there was bribery is unquestionably there. There is a transaction in which bribe giver is being convicted. We are only struggling to find out the identity of the bribe taker," he said. "Obviously, the bribe taker has to be among those who influenced to ward the contract. Strangers don't get bribes. Those who influenced decision get bribes," Jaitley added.