Antony picks holes in Rafale deal, says 36 jets not enough for air force
WAR OF WORDS According to Cong leader, IAF needs more jets to counter Pak’s air power
NEW DELHI: The culmination of a 7.8-billion euro agreement for 36 Rafale fighter planes from France triggered a political dogfight on Saturday, with the Congress finding faults in the deal.
Addressing a press conference, former defence minister AK Antony questioned how just 36 fighter planes would fill the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) capability gaps especially when Pakistan was rapidly beefing up its air power.
The IAF projected a requirement for modern fighter planes way back in 2001 to replace ageing Soviet-era fighter jets. India floated a global tender in August 2007 to buy 126 planes but it stood cancelled when Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared India would buy 36 Rafales from France under a government-togovernment deal.
Defence minister Manohar Parrikar and his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian inked the inter-governmental agreement on Friday, ending the long-drawn-out negotiations that began after Modi announced the deal in April 2015.
Antony said if the IAF was not equipped with more fighter planes, its fighter squadron strength would dip to 25 by 2022. Currently, India has 33 fighter squadrons with 18 planes each but it requires 45 units to tackle a combined threat from China and Pakistan.
According to Antony, the absence of provisions for transfer of technology to build the warplanes in India would cost the country “very heavily”.
The senior Congress leader said the original deal’s ‘Make in India’ component that aimed to build 108 of the 126 planes in the country was “gone” in the present deal.
“Now they are purchasing everything from abroad and that too when we are talking about Make in India,” he said. He asked the government to make the agreement public.
The NDA government has claimed hard bargaining helped India save 328 million euros. “Today we read inspired pieces in some media, which claim the present government has saved money by hard negotiations. That’s not true,” Antony said. “You can’t compare the Rafale deal price during UPA government’s time and now.”
However, the NDA government has said in the past that the deal for 126 fighters was doomed from the start because Antony had put a “question mark” on it. French firm Dassault Aviation, which manufactures Rafale fighters, was the front-runner for that contract.
In an earlier interview with HT, Parrikar questioned the tendering process for the 126 planes and criticised the method employed to determine Dassault Aviation as the lowest bidder.