 "François Hollande tells French media outlet Dassault had no choice in selecting Rafale deal partner; MoD 'verifying' report")
The defence ministry on Friday said it is ‘verifying’ a statement attributed to former French president François Hollande, which said that Dassault Aviation did not have a choice in selecting its partner in the Rafale deal. The defence ministry’s statement said —
The report referring to fmr French president Mr. Hollande's statement that GOI insisted upon a particular firm as offset partner for the Dassault Aviation in Rafale is being verified.
— Ministry of Defence, Government of India (@SpokespersonMoD) September 21, 2018
It is reiterated that neither GoI nor French Govt had any say in the commercial decision.
In an article published by French journal Mediapart, Hollande on a question about who selected a particular Indian firm as a partner and why, said it was the Indian government that proposed the firm’s name and Dassault had no choice but to take the company given to it. “We did not have a say in that. The Indian government proposed this service group, and Dassault negotiated with Ambani. We did not have a choice, we took the interlocutor we were given,” said Hollande. The interview was published in French and excerpts of Hollande’s interview were tweeted by French newspaper LeMonde journalist Julien Boissou. Hollande’s reported statement contradicts the Indian government’s claim that the agreement between Dassault and the Indian firm was a commercial pact between two private parties and the government had nothing to do with it. [caption id=“attachment_5235811” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of a Rafale jet. Wikimedia Commons[/caption] Congress leader Manish Tewari on Friday immediately retweeted this article and asked Hollande: “President (Former) Francois Hollande should also enlighten us how the price went up from 590 crores in 2012 to 1690 crores in 2015 per Rafale fighter jet? Escalation of a mere 1100 crores. I am sure the Euro equivalent would not be a problem to calculate.” In a statement on Twitter, the Congress also said that Hollande’s statement “exposes the web of lies spun by the Modi government”. Responding to the Congress’ attacks on the government for keeping Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) out of the Rafale deal under an offset clause, both finance minister Arun Jaitley and defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman have been constantly stressing that Dassault and the Indian firm got into an agreement on their own. Former chairman and managing director (CMD) of HAL, T Suvarna Raju, in an interview to a media house claimed that Dassault and HAL had signed the mutual workshare contract and given it to the government. He further said that the life-cycle costs of the aircraft would have been cheaper if the aircraft were made in India. However, contradicting this, defence sources on Thursday claimed disagreements between HAL and Dassault Aviation had led to the collapse of negotiations between the two in the Rafale fighter plane deal during the UPA term. With inputs from ANI
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