NEW DELHI: Amid charges that the Narendra Modi government contracted France for 36 fighter aircraft at inflated prices, France has intensified lobbying to sell more of the fighter aircraft coinciding with the current visit of President Emmanuel Macron.
France has sweetened the deal to sell 36 more Rafales by not only harking back to a ‘strategic partnership’ that withstood India’s travails post the 1998 nuclear tests. Paris also signed a pact with New Delhi on Saturday that would, upon implementation, allow Indian warships, military aircraft and land forces to access French bases in the Indian Ocean Region on a mutually agreed basis. French Indian Ocean territories are in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa and islands near Madagascar and Mauritius where they have military bases.
The agreement is the second of its kind India has inked with a foreign power, after the 2016 pact with the US. But it is the prospect that the Indian Air Force may contract 36 more Rafale fighter aircraft that animates the current visit.
The Congress on Friday alleged Modi took a unilateral decision to enter into a `59,000 crore deal to contract 36 Rafales, at `1,670 crore apiece, despite the UPA II having negotiated the price in 2012 at `526 crore.
However, the contours of the deal negotiated (but not contracted) by the UPA under A K Antony as defence minister and the current one are different. The UPA was negotiating for 126 aircraft with 18 to be bought off-the-shelf and the rest to be made in India through transfer of technology. The basic price in 2012 did not include the weapons package, the cost of training and the setting up of facilities.
Defence ministry sources say the total package contracted now includes all of these.
But Dassault Aviation, France’s primary contractor for the Rafale aircraft whose CEO Eric Trappier is a member of Macron’s delegation, has sensed a huge business opportunity because the Indian Air Force had projected an operational requirement of 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (in which category is the Rafale). The requirement could possibly go up to 210 aircraft.
14 pacts inked
India and France tightened their embrace on Saturday, agreeing to ramp up the two-decade-old strategic partnership and signing
14 agreements in areas as diverse as defence, space, narcotics, education, urban development, maritime and nuclear cooperation, railways, solar energy, environment, reciprocal protection of classified information, hydrography and maritime cartography, smart cities, among others. P7