On February 08, 2019, journalist N. Ram published a story in The Hindu titled "Defence Ministry protested against PMO undermining Rafale negotiations". Mr Ram has cited a Defence Ministry’s internal note dated November 24, 2015, to contend that the Defence Ministry raised strong objections to “parallel negotiations” conducted by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) with the French side. Here is the letter published by The Hindu in the report:

The same letter was tweeted by NDTV journalists like Sunetra Choudhury and Nidhi Razdan as well.

Cropped Letter

The letter published by The Hindu is real but was mischievously cropped to exclude the then Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar’s response. The full page of the note was published by ANI which contains the then defence minister Manohar Parrikar reply.

“It appears PMO and French President office are monitoring the progress of the issue which was an outcome of the summit meeting. Para 5 appears to be an over reaction. Defence Secretary (G Mohan) may resolve the matter in consultation with Principal Secretary to PM.”, Parrikar writes on the same page of the same note. However, this was completely missing from The Hindu’s report.

Credit: ANI

The above reply by the Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar clearly falsifies the misleading narrative of his ministry protesting against the PMO. 

G Mohan Kumar, the Defence Secretary at the time of the Rafale negotiations, has come out and said that the ‘dissent note’ had “nothing to do with the price”. He said, “It was about sovereign guarantees and general terms and conditions” as reported by ANI.

Normal practice for PMO to receive calls from its counterparts

Nitin A. Gokhale, National Security Analyst and the founder of defense news portal BhartShakti.in tweeted that the report by The Hindu is pure obfuscation as it is a normal practice for the PMO to receive calls from counterparts in other countries. He also shared letters by the French PM which shows that the French Govt was taking the full guarantee. The Indian negotiating team was okay with it once Ministry of law cleared it.

He also pointed out that the Deputy Secretary (Air II) was not even part of the negotiating team or in the chain of decision making. Air Marshal SBP Sinha, the head of the Indian Negotiating Team raised the query about comfort letter with Indian PMO since General Stephen Reb, the head of the French Negotiating Team mentioned the two PMOs were in discussion on the issue.

Now, since the two PMOs were in discussion, Air Marshal Sinha had to go through the Indian PMO since he or the negotiating team could not have talked to the French PMO directly. All these are normal procedures but it was projected as interference by PMO in the work of defence ministry. It must be pointed out that PMO is above all other ministries and it can intervene, guide, object in any negotiation in any ministry.

You can read his full thread and see these letters on Twitter.