Mumbai
\nDenying any cronyism in the Rafale fighter aircraft deal, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said here on Thursday that details about offset partners will be known only when the procurement begins.<\/p>\n
\u201c…Dassault and two or three companies are participating in the supply of Rafale. So each one of them will have an offset obligation to be fulfilled,\u201d she said at the \u2018India Summit: Status of the nation\u2019, organised by the Economist magazine.<\/p>\n
Asked about the controversy surrounding Dassault Aviation\u2019s choice of Anil Ambani\u2019s Reliance Defence as an offset partner, Sitharaman said each company involved in the supply will have its offset partners in India.<\/p>\n
\u201cTill such time they claim each and everyone of them, I will not know whether they are with one, or ten or with hundred (Indian offset partners),\u201d the minister said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe offset partners\u2019 details will be known when they approach me with bills detailing what kind of service is being received, whether it is in the form of equipment or investment,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
While the Congress has alleged irregularities in the Rafale deal and accused the government of favouring Ambani\u2019s firm, the government as well as Anil Ambani have vehemently denied the opposition party\u2019s allegations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey still have time to come back to me to say look, my offset is getting fulfilled through these routes. They will have to submit transaction details of who got the money, for what purpose. Till all that is done, I cannot even claim how many people they are going with,\u201d the minister added.<\/p>\n
She said the previous UPA government had floated a global tender for procurement of Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft .<\/p>\n
\u201cThey never bought it (the aircraft) but always claim that they bought it at one particular amount,\u201d she said, rebutting the Congress allegation that the price of the aircraft shot up in the deal signed by the NDA government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe emergency number which UPA required was 18 but with more time passing, the emergency number what we wanted was 36, which is equal to two squadrons,\u201d the defence minister said.<\/p>\n
She said the UPA government went for an open tender but the present government opted for an inter-governmental tender.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the 18 and for the rest they went for a tender. What we have done is that we have gone for inter-governmental tender for first 36 emergency number, while rest of the procurement will be through strategic partnership,\u201d Sitharaman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mumbai Denying any cronyism in the Rafale fighter aircraft deal, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said here on Thursday that details about offset partners will be known only when the procurement begins. \u201c…Dassault and two or three companies are participating in the supply of Rafale. So each one of them will have an offset obligation to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45497,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312,315],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45498,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45496\/revisions\/45498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}