UPA sat over IAF’s urgent need for a decade?

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday justified Prime Minister Modi striking a deal during his France visit to buy 36 Rafale fighter aircraft, a matter that had been kept hanging by the UPA for a decade, jeopardising national security.

She told a Press conference that it was an emergency purchase to address the Manmohan Singh government's inaction, so as to meet the urgent requirement of the Indian Air Force.

"Between 2004 and 2014, in an entire decade, the UPA could not arrive at a decision. Therefore, when we came to power in 2014, we had to move forward so that our Air Force is not constrained by lack of preparedness," she said.

She asserted that the deal was finalised through a transparent procedure and the Cabinet Committee on Security had approved it before it was signed. She even disputed the Congress claim that the PM had kept in dark her predecessor Manohar Parrikar about the deal.

"The agreement was signed with the CCS in the loop and the active participation of my predecessor," Sitharaman said, dismissing Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi's claim that PM Modi signed the Rafale deal just to benefit "one businessman."

She said the new company of Anil Ambani, which is being attacked by the Congress, came into picture as a policy decision of the government to involve the Indian private sector in defence production, which was thus far reserved for the public sector.

The Congress party lost no time in finding fault with the defence minister's prognosis, rubbishing her claim of UPA's inaction with the assertion that the UPA government had already clinched the deal in 2012 to buy 126 aircraft and that too with technology transfer, which made indigenous production possible in future.

On Sitharaman's claim that 36 aircraft were purchased as an emergency measure, Congress chief spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala asked: "What was the need to buy on emergency basis when regular purchase had been already negotiated?"

If there were an emergency, why even after the lapse of 34 months, not a single aircraft has been delivered, he asked.

He also lambasted the defence minister for denying the offset deal for 50% contract value, telling her to better read the Reliance website on the award of offset worth Rs 30,000 crore in a joint venture with Dassault Aviation.

The defence minister has claimed the final agreement signed in September last year contemplates delivery of 36 Rafale fighter aircraft only between September 2019 and April 2022.

Surjewala said she also did not explain how she was refuting the Congress charge that the cost of each aircraft in ‘Modi' deal is three times what the UPA government had finalised in negotiations with France in 2012.

The government is now buying 36 aircraft through Ambani at a cost of Rs 60,000 crore, as against the UPA's deal to buy 126, with technology transfer, for just Rs 54,000 crore.

Each aircraft would have cost US$ 80.95 million (Rs 526.1 crore) under the UPA deal; as against this, the Modi government's negotiated price is US$241.66 million (Rs 1570.8 crore), Surjewala underlined.