The Narendra Modi government's new Rafale deal is 2.86 percent cheaper than the UPA government's unconcluded deal, showed the CAG report, which was tabled in the Parliament on Wednesday. With regard to India Specific Enhancements, the deal was 17.08 percent cheaper, said the report.

However, the report did not mention any details regarding the prices.

Though this comes as a big relief for the Modi government which has been under attack over the $8.7 billion Rafale deal, it has also provided ammunition to the opposition to continue the attack.

In terms of engineering support package and performance-based logistics, the deal was 6.54 percent expensive, the report stated.

It highlighted that the govt claimed the deal was 9 percent cheaper, which was not the case. It said that the contract for Rafale consisted of six packages with 14 items in total, out of which, the price of seven items was higher than the aligned price.

The report also highlighted that the government settled for 'Letter of Comfort' instead of a "sovereign guarantee". It also noted that the delivery schedule of the 2016 contract improved by only one month in comparison to the 2007 offer.

"Audit, therefore examined the system of capital acquisition of air assets to assess its ability to meet the required capabilities, at the optimum price and the given timeframe," stated the report.

The report said that IAF did not define the Air Staff Qualitative Requirements (ASQRs) properly, due to which the vendors could not fully meet the ASQRs. It added that ASQRs were changed repeatedly during the procurement process which created difficulties during technical and price evaluation and affected the integrity of competitive tendering. This led to the delays in the acquisition process, the report added.

"Overall the capital acquisition system, as it exists, is unlikely to effectively support the IAF in its operational preparedness and modernisation," it said.

The war of words between the BJP and the Congress turned uglier on Tuesday with Rahul Gandhi calling CAG "Chowkidar Auditor General", implying that the CAG was playing into the hands of PM Modi who in turn was acting as a "middleman" for Anil Ambani.

Gandhi on Tuesday came out with an email that he claimed revealed that Anil Ambani visited Paris to meet the defence minister of France 10 days before the deal took place

In December, the Supreme Court gave a clean chit to the NDA government dismissing all petitions calling for an investigation into the purchase of Rafale warplanes.

The Rafale deal is a defence agreement signed between the government of India and France for Rafale fighter, a twin-engine Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) manufactured by French aerospace company Dassault Aviation.

Indian Air Force had advanced a proposal for 126 fighter aircraft in August 2007, under the UPA government and had floated a tender. Of these, 18 were to be delivered by Dassault Aviation in a flyaway condition and 108 were to be manufactured in India with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) being the partner. However, the deal did not materialise under the UPA government.

After prime minister Narendra Modi came to power, an inter-government agreement (IGA) was signed by the defence ministers of both countries on Sept 23, 2016 for the purchase of 36 Rafale fighter aircraft in a flyaway condition and ever since the deal has been surrounded by controversies as Dassault chose Reliance group firm of Anil Ambani as an offset partner.

The deal triggered a political storm in India after Former French president Francois Hollande, who approved the deal when he was in office, said the Indian government influenced the choice of a local partner in the deal.

The government has, however, denied all the allegations.

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(With inputs from agencies)

First Published:Feb 13, 2019 11:22 AM IST