 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are going to cover the latest installment which has come on media part, the French online side which has been looking at the Dassault India Rafale deal. Raghu, the latest question seems to be more on the reliance part of the deal that not so much as whether the price was right or wrong. Of course, the figures as you have earlier also pointed out can be said that well we do not know what is a one-to-one correspondence between the old deal and the new deal. But there seems to be very little doubt that reliance was really made a condition of the deal and this is what the Dassault inter company memo seems to say. Yes, see there is very little doubt and I think we have covered this ground earlier that if Dassault as an independent company choosing offset partners in India were to have independently done due diligence and looked for partners, there is no commercial or technical reason on earth for selecting the Anil Ambani group. Two issues which a due diligence would be done, one is the financial stability of the group, it was deeply indebted, it was not able to pay the monies even now we have the case of Ericsson asking his Anil Ambani's passport to be impounded because they have not paid 550 crores which the Supreme Court has mandated they must pay Ericsson. So that is the financial information and the second part because it has zero experience in aerospace and forget aerospace zero experience in manufacturing. The only argument they have given is the Pippa Va but the Pippa Va of Shipyard is a completely different kettle of fish and it was not part of the Anil Ambani enterprise to begin with and if he is going to do anything in aerospace he will have to do everything from recruiting manpower to acquiring machinery and everything from scratch. Even the Pippa Va was 2016 that they acquired the company which also was a sick company not able to pay its contractors and so on. So there is very clear whether it was you will of course now come across the usual denials by government spokesmen, people will come and say show me the written document where we say that you must choose that's all, there will obviously be no written document. In this case yes there is no Indian government written document but the Dassault internal memos by the number two of Dassault that seems to say so. It says it's a counterparty, I would not know the French but assume it's a counterparty but it also says imperative it also says compensation is a translation they have done but actually the word used was this is imperative and obligatory on us and to have it as a counterparty in French which has been translated by a media part as compensation in English but it could be also said to be counterparty but the operative words is imperative that we have reliance as a counterparty or as compensation whichever translation you choose to. Exactly, now the issue also is government is also hiding behind the fact and Dassault also in trying to cover up this entire issue is hiding behind the fact that Dassault has identified more than 72 partners in India for different parts of the offset contract and if we look through these various different partners for offsets they have been carefully selected for specific roles in electronics, in avionics, component manufacture, companies which have background and experience often of more than 20 years in India small enterprises and so on. Now Dassault a company which can identify 72 such enterprises for smaller parts of offset contracts actually having to do with the Rafale and Allied components you think they will not do due diligence for a contract involving more than 20,000 crores in selecting Anil Ambani group it makes no sense whatsoever so whether it is compulsion whether it is a direction or it is nudges and winks it was clearly made obvious to Dassault that they should choose the Ambani group. You know there are two other quick parts to this one is that Hal we have earlier also discussed so when Raju is on record saying the papers for the offset the work share was with the government. So this whole argument of the defense minister that HAL was not able to deliver HAL did not manage to finalize the contract that has been already shown to be bogus at least on record and we still have no explanation why Hal was removed from the deal and then Ambani brought in like this so this is one part of it. Second is as of date the only joint venture that seems to have been built as in terms of the infrastructure is a simple shed is that seems to be the only way it has been done it does not look like reliance or shall we say the joint venture has also made much headway. Not at all one argument you will be given is they still have time till 2020 to start work on this and in any case there is not a single nut or bolt going to be done in this which has connection with Rafal all the works that is going to be done for in the offsets contract by reliance is going to be to do with Falcon executive jets etc. So they will say yeah we will do this later and they can put up a hanger and stuff like that but as I was saying earlier without technical competence once this deal goes through what you will find basically is Dasault coming in and setting up this enterprise on a turnkey basis and Anil Ambani will essentially be a Benami operator but receiving the money and where the money goes from Anil Ambani's company is anybody's guess. That is the other describe that Dasault inner circle seem to have shown that a money is not investing anything the joint venture but most of the monies which are going in for whatever purposes may be are going in as Dasault's share of the investments and this is something that Anil Ambani earlier has also done there is another namesake Rafal which is an Israeli company Rafal in which they also brought in and this is Prashant Bhushan Arunshore's document they have given to CBI that they really brought nothing to the deal. So they seem to be giving their name and their quote unquote good offices for getting 49% of the share and you think this is also likely to happen here. Very much so and this is going to be a put up job in which Dasault will have to do all the running so that Anil Ambani can earn money and that money will be used for a variety of could be used for a variety of reasons which we don't know which we absolutely don't know but they have 49% of the share of the profit from whatever the deal produces. Although when you started off you talked about how we may not know exactly the one-to-one price comparisons between the older deal and the newer deal on the basic price of the aircraft but there seem to be indications also emerging from Dasault that there was possibly an inflation of the price now for the 36 aircraft deal compared to the earlier one because of the offsets contract because the company has to invest in offsets they may have offset the offsets by increasing Dasault's own price exactly. The last question a big question mark on the 110 aircraft for which there was a move to also procure right now and start the RFP and so on and there was an expectation Dasault would be the front runner for that a big question on that on the 57 aircraft again which Dasault could be a front runner with the F-18s for the naval part of it which is I think 57 aircraft all of these are in the range of 100,000 crore and more so do you think that this irrespective of what happens in the in this particular deal a question mark is erased on Rafale entering these two deals. Unfortunately that might be one of the spin-offs of this I say unfortunate because in this new tender for the 114 aircraft the same six aircraft are competing as had competed earlier. There is no earthly reason again why the results of any assessments by the Indian Air Force in terms of technical parameters, staff quality requirements or field trials should turn out any differently from the previous process which has taken several years from which Rafale emerged as the leading contender. So there is no reason why that should not be repeated this time if there is some difference now that will raise questions again of a different kind and if the Indian Air Force is actually going to acquire this 36 plus another 100 and odd Rafales for the Air Force then it would stand to reason for issues of compatibility and logistics that the navy also acquire the same aircraft provided the technical performance match. There is an additional joker in the pack now after the S 400 missile deal with the Russians if the Trump administration invokes sanctions I think that would knock out the American aircraft from the running in which case there would be a different ball game at work and they will be very little to prevent Rafale emerging as the lead contender here. But of course it will open the question about why was 186, 126 aircraft. That of course was the original thing why was it cancelled in the first place and if you cancel it then why float another tender for 110 it seems to. But it does look like now the scanner is on and the Dassault reliance of the deal and there the Modi government seems to have very little defense as of now. Extremely weak wicket. And whatever Nirmala Sitaraman said earlier regarding HAL etc etc all of it has been knocked out and only the weak defense they had was Dassault did it. Now that seems to be also increasingly becoming difficult to maintain. I think it was always difficult to maintain except that more and more evidence is coming to light regarding that. Thank you very much Jagu looks like we will have to keep on watching the Rafale deal for even some more time. That's all the time we have for Newsclick today. Do keep watching Newsclick, visit our website and also our YouTube page.