The Government has withdrawn the Request for Proposal (RFP) for the multi-billion dollar Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) deal in which six vendors participated and Rafale jet, built by French aviation company Dassault, was shortlisted in 2012, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar informed the Rajya Sabha in a written reply on Thursday.
“The RFP issued earlier for the procurement of 126 MMRCAs has been withdrawn. In the multi-vendor procurement case, the Rafale aircraft met all the performance characteristics stipulated in the RFP during the evaluation conducted by the Indian Air Force,” he said.
His reply came just months after Parrikar indicated that the over $20 billion MMRCA tender was virtually scrapped after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced during his visit to Paris in April that the Government had decided to purchase 36 Rafales off the shelf under a Government-to-Government contract. The talks for the 36 Rafales have already commenced between the Defence Ministries of the two countries, Parrikar informed the Rajya Sabha.
The Ministry had sent a letter to all the six vendors shortlisted for the RFP issued in 2007 for the proposed Rs42,000 crore deal including Russia’s MIG-35, F-16 and F-18(US), Grippen(Sweden), Eurofighter(consortium of Germany, UK and Italy) and Rafale informing them that the tender stands withdrawn.
