Govt decision on T-90 tanks irks Gowda

NEW DELHI, MARCH 15: The humble farmer' turned into a tank commander and technologist over a luncheon meeting with select journalists at...

NEW DELHI, MARCH 15: The humble farmer’ turned into a tank commander and technologist over a luncheon meeting with select journalists at his residence on Sunday. Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda continued with his missives against the T-90 tank, firing round after round of heat-seeking ammunition against the Government’s decision to evaluate the tank and put it through summer trials later in the year.

Continuing from his last bit of letter-writing to the Prime Minister, Deve Gowda declared that money was being wasted on the T-90.

“We should be going in for the updated versions of the T-72 instead,” he declared, adding he was determined to oppose the deal. He has already written three letters to the Prime Minister and others to the Defence Minister and the Speaker of the Lok Sabha regarding this.

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Deve Gowda held a Press conference soon after the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs had agred in principle to negotiate for the T-90 late last year. In his first letter to Prime Minister Atal BehariVajpayee, Deve Gowda had, strangely enough, written that if at all any tanks were to be imported, it was preferable to purchase the T-90 over the T-72s.

When this was pointed out to him, said South Block sources, Deve Gowda dismissed it as a typing error. “He had initialled every page of that letter,” the sourcs maintained.

The genesis of this dispute, said MoD sources, lies in a bitter struggle under way between rival Russian armament sales companies, Promexport and Roosvourozhenie. And when Deve Gowda visited Russia in March 1997, he is understood to have made a commitment to purchase the T-72s.

The fact that a Prime Minister was making a commitment on an MoD purchase is “most unusual”, said South Block sources. “This is akin to the alleged meeting between late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Olof Palme (of Sweden) over buying of the Bofors howitzers,” the sources said.

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The first Indo-Russian talks regarding the T-90 took place when former Defence Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav visited Moscow inlate 1997. A decision was taken by the then Government to enter into negotiations with Russia. An Army technical evaluation team was also sent to Moscow in early 1998 for conducting trials, the sources added.

The T-90 is expected to undergo summer trials in the desert as well as fire-offs with other competing models of the updated T-72. “Only then will we begin the process of finalising a deal,” MoD sources added.