Rafale arrival delayed due to BJP leaders' complaint in 2012: Antony

While expressing happiness over the landing of five Rafale fighter jets at the Ambala air base on Wednesday, India’s longest serving Defence Minister AK Antony said that had it not for been for complaints by two top BJP leaders in 2012, the French aircraft would have come to India when Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister. Setting the record straight, the Congress leader recalled that the discussions on the aircraft first started way back in 2001 when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister. Antony said in 2007 when under Singh’s prime ministership everything was in place to buy 18 Rafales from France and 108 others to be build at HAL but in 2012, he got a complaint about this deal from two senior BJP leaders. He as defence minister was in no position to put their complaint in the dustbin.