NEW DELHI, Sept 23 (AFP): India's Narendra Modi was under fire Saturday after French ex-president Francois Hollande added fresh fuel to corruption allegations in a bilateral defence deal, with the prime minister branded a traitor by his chief political opponent.
French defence firm Dassault picked Reliance Group, run by Indian billionaire Anil Ambani, as its main local partner in the multi-billion-dollar 2016 deal to buy 36 Rafale jets, instead of the state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).
This has long been controversial because unlike HAL, Reliance had no previous experience in the aeronautics sector.
Hollande, president from 2012-17, was quoted on Friday by investigative website Mediapart as saying that France was given no choice on Dassault's Indian partner.
"We did not have a say in that," Hollande was quoted as saying. "It was the Indian government that proposed this service group (Reliance), and Dassault who negotiated with Ambani.
"We did not have a choice, we took the interlocutor who was given to us."
The comments were front-page news in Indian newspapers on Saturday and was the top trending topic on Twitter.
Rahul Gandhi, head of the main opposition Congress party, who is seeking to replace Modi and his rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in elections next year, went on the offensive.
"An ex-president of France is calling him (the prime minister of India) a thief. It's a question of the dignity of the office of the prime minister," he told a news conference in New Delhi.
"The PM has betrayed India. He has dishonoured the blood of our soldiers," Gandhi, scion of India's Gandhi-Nehru political dynasty, added on Twitter.
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