It is time for the Prime Minister to explain the Rafale aircraft deal

The government must provide the answers

As more and more details on the controversial Rafale aircraft deal become public, the government’s continued silence on the purchase of 36 fighter aircraft from France in September 2016 is baffling. Most recently, a three-part series in this newspaper has drawn extensively from the aborted 2007 tender (Request for Proposals, or RFP) for 126 Rafale fighters to show how all the four issues which the government claimed as new in the 2016 deal was already there earlier. For example, the government has argued that India-specific enhancements have raised the Rafale’s price. But the 2007 RFP contains all of these elements.