Picking Anil Ambani Firm Was ‘Mandatory’ to Seal Rafale Deal: French Report

In yet another explosive investigative report, that has come as a setback for Narendra Modi’s government French publication ‘Mediapart’ on has claimed that an internal report of Dassault Aviation shows the firm had considered signing Reliance Defence was “imperative and mandatory” to bag the Rafale jets contract.

This comes when India’s Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is on a 3-day visit to France, in which she will be taking stock of the progress of the big budget purchase of 36 Rafale jets at a cost of Rs 58,000 crore, among other talks.

The French journal report states, “A document obtained by Mediapart shows that Dassault considered this alliance as a ‘counterpart’, ‘imperative and mandatory’, to win the contract.”

The report further states that a presentation made by Dassault’s deputy chief executive officer Loik Segalen to the company’s representatives here referred to signing Reliance Defence as a “trade-off” to bag the Rafale contract. The report comes as a shot in the arm for opposition party Congress that kept up its attack on the Modi government of “manipulating” the process of Rafale fighter jet agreement by “punishing” bureaucrats who raised objections to the deal and rewarding “obliging officials”.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi also raised questions on Sitharaman’s France visit. Taking to Twitter, Gandhi alleged that “work has begun” to justify the prime minister’s decision to buy Rafale fighter aircraft.