Modi govt should come clean on Rafale deal: Yechury

Addressing a programme here, he claimed that in the last four years, the government had not taken any stringent action to recover the loans big business houses had taken.

“The BJP used to complain about the middleman culture in defence deals during the Congress regime. But now, the government itself has turned into a middleman and is helping businessmen clinch defence deals,” the Left leader alleged.

The Rafale deal, involving billions of dollars, could not be kept confidential, he said, adding, “Why is the government hiding this information from the country and Parliament?”

In the interests of transparency and probity, the government must reveal all the details of the deal to Parliament and the people, Yechury said.

Questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his “silence” on the Punjab National Bank scam, the CPI(M) leader alleged that the BJP-led NDA government wrote off loans worth Rs 3 lakh crore taken by big corporates from banks but did not waive the farmers’ dues.

Yechury demanded that the Prime Minister make public the list of persons whose loans were written off.