[<<Referring to Sitharaman as RM, short for Raksha Mantri (defence minister), Gandhi tweeted, “Dear RM, what’s shameful is your boss silencing you. “Please tell us: 1. Final price of each Rafale jet? 2. Did PM take CCS permission before announcing purchase in Paris? 3. Why PM bypassed experienced HAL & gave the deal to AA rated businessman with no defence experience?”>> (Source: < http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/rafale-row-shameful-that-boss-is-silencing-you-rahul-gandhi-hits-back-at-nirmala-sitharaman/story-B4HuKZsbNV6ezLQfVQKK0J.html >.)
I/II. [Five Posers by opposition Congress spokesperson.]] http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/rafale-questions-4948541/ Rafale questions Government’s reluctance to share data on the price of the aircraft has raised several scenarios, none of them flattering to it Written by Randeep Singh Surjewala | Published: November 22, 2017 12:40 am The IAF conducted extensive testing and evaluation and Rafale was announced as the lowest bidder in 2012 (File) RELATED NEWS No overpricing in Rafale deal, says Indian Air Force ChiefNo overpricing in Rafale deal, says Indian Air Force Chief Why don’t you question PM Modi on Rafale deal, Amit Shah’s son: Rahul Gandhi asks mediaWhy don’t you question PM Modi on Rafale deal, Amit Shah’s son: Rahul Gandhi asks media Rafale deal to be signed on September 23Rafale deal to be signed on September 23 When the country’s defence minister conducts an official press conference from South Block, flanked by the ministry’s top bureaucrat and a military officer in uniform on either side, the least you expect is a presentation based on facts and figures. But what was witnessed last Friday was a political performance by a spokesperson of the ruling party, where none of the questions raised by the Congress on the Rafale fighter jet deal were answered. It is important to understand the context in which these answers are being demanded. In August 2007, after the Indian Air Force (IAF) raised the requirement for a Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA), a request for proposal (RFP) for procuring 126 Medium Role Combat Aircraft for the airforce was issued. Projected to cost $12 billion (Rs 42,000 crore), 18 of these aircraft were to come in a flyaway condition while there was to be a technology transfer (ToT) for 108 aircraft to be made in India by HAL, Bengaluru. The IAF conducted extensive testing and evaluation and Rafale was announced as the lowest bidder in 2012. The process was hailed globally as “the world’s most professionally run fighter competition”. Under the UPA, negotiations with Dassault Aviation continued with a sole objective: To get the best deal for India. It was soon after the terms had been concluded, to India’s undeniable advantage, that the BJP-led NDA government came to power. In September 2014, the then Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha, said that the contract was expected to be signed “soon”. In November 2014, Dassault Aviation CEO Eric Trappier said that he expected the final contract would be signed by March 2015. Then, in April 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in Paris that India was going to purchase a mere 36 Rafale fighters from France in a government-to-government deal. Here is where the terms start being rewritten. The MMRCA tender was withdrawn by July and in September 2016, the NDA government signed a $8.7 billion (over Rs 56,000 crore) deal, with no transfer of technology to India. No role was guaranteed for any Indian public sector company, including HAL, in such an important project. However, a private Indian businessman, who had no experience of defence manufacturing, was present in Paris during the PM’s visit and eventually benefited from the announcement. There are some obvious questions raised by this deal, which have not been answered by the government. Foremost among them is: What is the price being paid per aircraft? Is it comparable or even close to the price being offered to India under the UPA government? The defence minister claims that her government has got the aircraft for much cheaper than the price earlier offered to the UPA government. Yet, there is an uneasiness and unwillingness to share the data. Prices are not a matter of national security and these figures were made available to the public when the UPA held office. The government’s reluctance to share this data leads to several inferences. None of them are flattering. This brings us to a second series of questions: How steep, exactly, are these renegotiated prices given that the government had to drop the technology transfer component for the 36-fighter deal? The government’s claim is based on a ludicrous proposition. In sum, it implies that Dassault was offering the Indian government more aircraft, with technology transfer, for significantly less when the UPA was negotiating the deal. However, there was a sharp and unexplained increase in the cost of manufacturing after the NDA came to power, which means we can only afford to buy 36 aircraft without the much-needed technology transfer. The BJP realises that this is a proposition that, at best, makes it look negligent and at worst, complicit in something murkier. Thirdly, the government must elaborate on the official process followed before the announcement made by the PM in Paris. Was an approval of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) taken before the announcement? If so, why was the then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar in Goa, instead of accompanying the PM in Paris when such an important announcement was being made? The morning after the announcement, Parrikar told PTI in Goa that the 36 fighters would join service with the IAF within two years. The signing of the deal itself took 16 months, and 36 fighters will only be with the IAF nearly seven years after the PM made the announcement in Paris. There is clearly a vast information gap between the two ministers. Moreover, there is a clearly defined Defence Procurement Procedure which lays out the steps to be taken before any defence item is to be procured from abroad, even through a direct government-to-government route. That procedure seems to have been given a go-by in this case. The fourth question is about the selection of a private company for discharging offsets worth 50 per cent of the cost of the Rafale contract. With no technology transfer from France, and with this company having no track-record in defence manufacturing, what kind of vetting was conducted by the government to allow this selection? Why was the HAL not selected for working with Dassault? If this isn’t unabashed and arrogant crony capitalism, the government needs to stop giving defensive answers and explain the rationale for selecting this particular company. India’s national security requirements are non-negotiable. There is no room for arbitrary and opaque decision-making, when there is so much at stake. By not providing answers to these simple questions asked by the nation, the defence minister is doing herself and the government a huge disservice. If there is one thing the government must learn from its tenure so far it is that the truth cannot be wished away. No matter how much propaganda you throw at it. The writer is an MLA and in-charge of the media and communications department of the Indian National Congress II. [In the past few weeks, BJP leaders, Union ministers, their supporters and a host of right-wing defence analysts have provided a long list of reasons for the cancellation of the RFP and they keep saying the “collapse” of the negotiations was the reason for Modi to take such call. But none of them answered the legality of Modi taking a unilateral call without the approval of relevant cabinet committees and undermining the power of his own cabinet colleagues and senior cabinet ministers – especially the minister of defence and minister of finance. More importantly, none of the apologists is able to give a reason for why the negotiations “collapsed” after the April 8 evening press conference of India’s foreign secretary in which he stated that negotiations were on between the Indian government, Dassault and HAL. ...] https://thewire.in/198840/rafale-deal-modi-must-use-opportunity-clear-air-transparent/ ARMED FORCES Modi Should Explain How Rafale Deal Went From ‘95% Complete’ to Zero in Two Weeks BY RAVI NAIR ON 22/11/2017 Days before the PM replaced the deal with one that would eventually exclude HAL, the Dassault CEO had said ‘contract finalisation and signature could come very soon.’ So what changed? Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Credit: Reuters The manner in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi bypassed a number of relevant institutional mechanisms to announce the purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets during his official visit to France in 2015 is being re-examined with greater focus. A look at the events preceding Modi’s visit in April 2015 by itself suggests a startling lack of transparency. The main questions revolve around how the prime minister took such a big call on cancelling and revamping the Rafale deal – a subject closely related to national security and the public exchequer – before relevant approval or inter-ministerial discussion. And why did defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman beat around the bush last week by insisting that all due procedures were followed? As defence journalists have pointed out, former defence minister Manohar Parrikar was informed hurriedly only a few days before Modi’s France visit of the decision to acquire 36 jets, leaving him to publicly defend a decision that “he neither understood nor agreed with”. Consider the circumstances surrounding Modi’s announcement to procure 36 aircraft in fly-away condition from France. Just a day before the PM’s visit, in a customary press briefing, foreign secretary S. Jaishankar said: “In terms of Rafale, my understanding is that there are discussions underway between the French company, our Ministry of Defence, the HAL which is involved in this. These are ongoing discussions. These are very technical, detailed discussions. We do not mix up leadership level visits with deep details of ongoing defence contracts. That is on a different track. A leadership visit usually looks at big picture issues even in the security field.” This shows that the foreign ministry’s senior-most bureaucrat – who ought to have a had a clear idea of the prime minister’s itinerary in a foreign country – was not aware of the impending announcement. Or, in other words, the official stand still appeared to be a continuation of the deal that the previous UPA-II government had laid down – for a larger purchase (of 126 aircraft) from the French company that involved the government-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) as the Indian manufacturing partner. Jaishankar’s statement also shows that until April 8, 2015, HAL was officially still very much a part of the deal. Put in another way, it would appear that the government had not turned its back on negotiations that were based on the outcome and terms and conditions of the original request for proposal (RFP). There is other evidence to suggest that even Dassault CEO and chairman Eric Trappier may not have been aware of Modi’s decision to cut the size of the deal to 36 aircraft, exclude HAL and remove the crucial transfer of technology clauses. An Agence France-Presse report (published on Indian Defense News on March 27, 2015) quotes Trappier as saying that the work on completing an Indian contract for the Rafale fighter jet is taking time, but the deal to purchase 126 Rafales is now “95% completed.” Also read: Explainer: Questions the Modi Government Needs to Answer on the Rafale Fighter Jet Purchase There is also a video available in public domain, published by Dassault on March 25, 2015 – just two weeks before Modi’s France visit and the reduced order announcement. In the video – which was shot on the occasion of the handing over of two upgraded Mirage-2000s to IAF by Dassault in the presence of senior IAF officials and Indian ambassador to France – Trappier says that Dassault has a long-standing relationship with HAL and that will be more strengthened once the order for 126 Rafales is concluded and that he is looking forward to that. He proudly states that Dassault is happy to abide by all the conditions of the RFP. “Considering as well our conformity with the RFP, in order to be in line with the rules of this competition, I strongly believe that contract finalisation and signature could come very soon,” he said. If the contract negotiations for a deal worth billions of dollars were “95% completed” in the three years from 2012 and Dassault was eagerly waiting to conclude the deal abiding the terms and conditions of the RFP, what might have prompted Modi to cancel the contract altogether? One possible reason, put forth by opposition political parties in India, is that it helped boost India’s private sector as a whole and in particular benefitted certain Indian private companies – namely Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence – which went on to become a significant joint venture partner of Dassault for the off-the-shelf purchase of 36 aircraft. In the past few weeks, BJP leaders, Union ministers, their supporters and a host of right-wing defence analysts have provided a long list of reasons for the cancellation of the RFP and they keep saying the “collapse” of the negotiations was the reason for Modi to take such call. But none of them answered the legality of Modi taking a unilateral call without the approval of relevant cabinet committees and undermining the power of his own cabinet colleagues and senior cabinet ministers – especially the minister of defence and minister of finance. More importantly, none of the apologists is able to give a reason for why the negotiations “collapsed” after the April 8 evening press conference of India’s foreign secretary in which he stated that negotiations were on between the Indian government, Dassault and HAL. And most surprisingly, Trappier and the company with whom the negotiations were on – Dassault – were not aware of these collapse of negotiations. Instead of engaging in tactics that divert from these important questions, the government needs to provide convincing answers especially because billions of dollars of public money is involved. Most importantly, the prime minister needs to provide a valid reason for the cancellation of the RFP (the new deal, as others have pointed out, was not only more expensive on a per unit basis but also failed to fulfil the requirements of the IAF), the exclusion of HAL and the reasoning behind such a drastic and unilateral turnaround. Ravi Nair can be contacted on Twitter @t_d_h_nair -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
