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Rafale deal has better terms, cleared by CCS, says Nirmala:
Context
Latest development with regard to Rafale deal
What has happened?
The Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) with France for 36 Rafales was arrived at to meet the critical requirement of the Air Force (IAF) and was cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS)
Backdrop
- In 2000, a proposal was mooted to procure 126 Mirage-2000 jets to replace the Mig-21s in service which was later converted to the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) for which the Request For Proposal (RFP) was issued in 2007. Of the 126, 18 were direct fly-away aircraft and 108 were to be licence manufactured in India
- In September 2016, India and France signed the €7.87-billion agreement for the aircraft, spares, weapons, 10 years of annual maintenance and associated equipment. The deal has a 50% offset clause to be executed by Dassault and its partners
- On completion of field evaluation trials, only two of the six vendors were found to be fully compliant and the Dassault Aviation was declared the L1, Ms
Allegations of a scam
Recently, the Congress party had alleged a “huge scam” in the deal and accused the Modi government of “promoting the interests of Prime Minister’s crony capitalist friends”
