The days ahead for George Fernandes, it seems, are not good. He had entered the public life six-decade ago and never got as isolated as he is now. His old socialist friends, the BJP and the RSS are supporting Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. George’s old political friends are sympathizing with him only.

The ongoing tussle inside JD (U) is an old story now. George has found his feet in the Barak anti-missile systems deal. The CBI has filed FIR in the court against him accusing him for clearing the deal and taking money.

Once he was gone to RSS office as Advani’s representative and once he was as the poster boy of the Sangh Parivaar’s brand of secularism too. Now he is running out of friends. Strange...

After becoming accused in the missile deal scam, he named Kalam for giving the green signal to the PM for the Barak Defense system.

However, CNN IBN has showed a letter written by Kalam to the PM stating that the missile system had a 50 per cent failure rate. The letter indicates that Kalam never supported the purchase of the defense system from Israel.

This happened for the first time that any politician would have blamed APJ Abdul Kalam for any wrongdoing. Poor George. He had alleged that when the government decided to buy Barak missiles, it happened with the consent of the present President of India.

Now, the letter is showing that Dr APJ Abdul Kalam had clearly opposed the proposal to buy the Barak anti-missile defence systems from an Israeli company.

Dr Kalam, the then scientific advisor to the defence minister had written in a letter on June 23, 1999 on the deal of Barak defense system as,

It has been brought to the Raksha Mantri’s (Defence Minister) notice that imported anti-missile defence systems has a failure rate of nearly 50 per cent as witnessed by DRDO during trials by the services. Even the cost of failure analysis by foreign suppliers is very high. We will be at the mercy of foreign suppliers for spares and support during the lifecycle of the entire system. Importing of any missile system will take one to two years and there is no reason that Trishul cannot be made ready before that.

Interestingly, Fernandes had given green signal to the deal of Barak anti-missile defence system after five days of getting the letter of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.The cabinet committee had passed the deal. However, The DRDO had given its consent for the deal.

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