Team Herald

PANJIM: Former Defence Minister and now Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar grabbed on the opportunity of a book launch to attack Congress in the midst of the Gujarat Assembly elections. 

Taking a dig at Congress, which during the campaign raised the issue that the Narendra Modi government negotiated an overpriced deal to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets from France, Parrikar said, “I laughed when I heard Digvijay Singh of Congress saying that when Prime Minister was signing Rafale deal, the Defence Minister was seen buying fish in Goa. Digvijay Singh was wrong on both observations. When Prime Minister was signing Rafale deal, one day prior to that, we had an extensive meeting with the Indian Air Force and we worked out the solution on how to come out of the logjam created by Saint Anthony ..err sorry, Defence Minister AK Antony of the UPA regime as he was called as Saint,” Parrikar said. 

He added that he saw a very strange noting in the file by Antony in which he said to start a discussion, finalise the price and then come back to him with documentary evidence as on how Dassault or the Rafale was the lowest bidder. “The CVC guideline says that you cannot negotiate with anyone other than the lowest bidder. How do you negotiate with someone and then prove that the bidder was the lowest?” Parrikar asked.

He added, “For two and half years the file was doing circles. We broke the circle by deciding that we have to by a different approach. I was watching many of the Congress stalwarts talking about Rafale in Gujarat election campaigns and I realised that these people (Congress) do not know anything about defence. A fighter aircraft is just not a plane. The plane/aircraft is probably the smaller part of the total cost. The real cost comes in special advanced equipment and armaments. This Raffle aircraft has a special helmet which is worn by the pilot and helps him fix the target by merely seeing the target and locking it. It virtually has a 360 degree visibility. Aircraft can be cheaper but to make the aircraft fighting fit the other component and equipments has to be bought which scales up the price. We are not buying toor dal and moong dal,” Parrikar said. 

He was speaking at the launch of “Securing India – The Modi Way”, a book published by Bloomsberry, written by defence expert Nitin A Gokhale.