India on Friday decided to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets from France to shore up the depleting combat fighter jet fleet strength of IAF. Announcing this breakthrough jointly with French President Francois Hollande, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in Paris that officials of the two countries will work out the terms and conditions of the deal. He said the decision to buy 36 Rafale jets in fly-away condition was taken keeping in view the “critical operational” necessity of the IAF and this offer was conveyed during his talks with Hollande.
Modi said that France was India’s trusted Defence partner while Hollande thanked Modi for the Rafale deal. The decision on Rafale jets was among the several agreements reached between the two countries after Modi’s meeting with Hollande. This deal will be a Government-to-Government agreement even as the Indian Defence Ministry is engaged in protracted contract negotiations with Dassault, the French aviation company which manufactures Rafale for the 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) deal. Parleys are on for last three years without making any headway due to different perceptions about the price of jets.
With India opting to buy 36 jets off-the-shelf, the two countries hope to break the logjam over price negotiations, thereby leading to delay in inking the MMRCA deal. Rafale had emerged as the lowest bidder in 2012 for the Rs42,000-crore deal ($7 billion). Officials said here they are hopeful of wrapping up the 36-jet contract within this year and the first aircraft may be inducted into the IAF within the next two years. The decision to buy 36 aircraft was taken at the highest political level before Modi left for his three-nation tour, they said.
While the fate of the MMRCA deal is not yet known amidst rumors that it may be scrapped after India buys 36 jets, differences on the price, between Indian Defence Ministry and Dassault still persist. India is insisting that it will not budge from the price quoted in Request for Proposal (RFP) but Dassault did not agree, leading to protracted negotiations, they said. As per the RFP, India was to buy 18 Rafales in fly-away condition from Dassault while the remaining 108 aircraft were to be manufactured by the Hindustan Aeronautics limited (HAl) under a transfer of technology pact. Moreover, HAl was also designated as the lead production agency in India.
It signals that India is keen to further strengthen strategic ties with France and the two countries have inked a similar Government-to-Government deal in the past. India bought 55 Mirage jet fighters from France in the mid-1980s under this pact.