Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi faced calls for his resignation over allegations of corruption in a military jet deal with France after former French president François Hollande was quoted as saying New Delhi had influenced the choice of a local partner, reports The Independent.
Indian political parties have been gunning for Mr Modi over the 2016 purchase of 36 Rafale planes from Dassault Aviation estimated to be worth 8.7 billion dollars, saying he had overpaid for the planes and had not been transparent.
In recent months, the opposition has questioned the government on the choice of billionaire Indian businessman Anil Ambani's Reliance Defence as Dassault's local partner instead of a state-run manufacturer with decades of experience.
On Friday, Mr Hollande, who cleared the intergovernmental deal when he was in office, was quoted [by Mediapart] as saying New Delhi had put pressure on Dassault to choose Reliance.
"We had no choice. We took the interlocutor that was given to us," he was reported as telling the French news service Mediapart, fuelling a political storm in India.
Under Indian defence procurement rules, a foreign firm must invest at least 30 percent of the contract in India to help it build up its manufacturing base and wean off imports.
For that, the French firm picked Reliance and not Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, the state-run giant that has been producing planes for decades, most of them Russian under licence.
"The PM personally negotiated and changed the Rafale deal behind closed doors. Thanks to François Hollande, we now know he personally delivered a deal worth billions of dollars to... Anil Ambani," Rahul Gandhi, the president of the main opposition Congress party, said in a tweet. "The PM has betrayed India."