No politics on awarding contract: Antony

As the race for bagging the biggest ever Indian defence deal worth over Rs 48,000 crore for 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft(MMRCA) hots up between Rafale and Eurofighter after their commercial bids were opened last week, Defence Minister AK Antony said on Friday there will be “no political considerations” in awarding the contract.

The Defence Minister made these remarks when asked if the Defence Ministry and the Government would take into account geo-political considerations before deciding on the winner of the mega-deal.

Antony said that as far as his Ministry was concerned, “Defence procurement is strictly professional and (based on) price. Technical evaluation is 101 per cent professional and then after that comes the price.”

His remarks came when the contract negotiating committee of the Defence Ministry is studying more than 1,000 pages of documents submitted by the two competitors.