Make Rafale deal public, says Cong

A day after India inked the Rs 59,000-crore agreement with France for purchasing 36 Rafale fighter jets, the Congress raised several questions regarding the deal. Former defence minister A K Antony demanded that the government make public the inter-governmental agreement with France.

He objected to what he described as “inspired pieces in some media, which claim the present government has saved money by hard negotiations. That’s not true.You can’t compare the Rafale deal price during UPA government’s time and now.”

Antony said: “I don't want to comment on the present price before I know the exact details. The government must publish the details of the final contract.” Antony recalled that he received complaints from many quarters, even from former finance minister Yashwant Sinha, on the price issue because of the fact that the concept of life cycle cost has been introduced.

“When there is a complaint that the price is high, we decided to enquire about that. We decided to wait for the final decision of the finance ministry,” he said. Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said the people must know what is the “fine print” of the contract which has been negotiated and what was the "fine print" of the contract which UPA government was negotiating when it left office in 2014.

Tewari sought to know “whether it is true that when the UPA left, the non-negotiated price of the Rafale was in the range of Rs 715 crore per aircraft and what has been negotiated today for the 36 aircraft in a fly-away condition is Rs 1,600 crore per aircraft, which is 123% escalation? Is it really an inter-governmental agreement on the lines of the US Foreign Military Sales Agreement or is it an agreement between the Government of India and the company with the French government only providing a comfort letter?” Tewari asked.