Modi wants to corner Sonia and Congress over AgustaWestland

Marking a significant shift in its strategy, the BJP has now decided to directly target Sonia Gandhi, the Congress President as one of the main beneficiaries in the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal. Armed with an order from an Italian court the BJP intends to go for the jugular by accusing her of being one of the principal beneficiaries of the kickbacks.

This will be the first time that the BJP is going to directly charge Sonia Gandhi of wrongdoing. The AgustaWestland issue was raised in the Lok Sabha on April 25, but the party limited itself to calling for a probe and a detailed statement from the defence minister. The issue came up for discussion at the parliamentary party meeting of the BJP the next day as well. The strategy was fine-tuned later in the evening at a meeting between party chief Amit Shah and finance minister Arun Jaitley.

The ruling dispensation has been under attack from the Opposition in general, and the Congress party in particular, on a range of issues. It has now decided to aggressively counter punch and try and put its opponents on the back foot. The party's political managers believe that unlike the Vajpayee government which fought shy of directly attacking the Congress leadership, the BJP needs to not just proactively counter the Congress party's offensive, but it also needs to expose the "Congress leaderships wrongdoings".

The Congress party on its part has vigorously protested the party chief's innocence. "It was the UPA government that  cancelled the deal, we ordered a CBI inquiry, not a penny was paid, not one chopper was bought, where is the question of any wrongdoing," says former defence minister AK Antony. It was during his tenure as the defence minister that the deal was called off.

The BJP nonetheless believes it has sufficient material in hand to corner the Congress chief. An Italian court has observed that there are sufficient grounds to believe that corruption took place in the Rs 3,600 crore VVIP chopper deal.

The BJP's attack is based on a letter written by Christian Michel, the main middleman, to the head of the AgustaWestland which describes the Congress president as one the main proponents of the deal.

The Italian court's judgment does mention former PM Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi but gives no proof any wrongdoing on their part.