On April 8, 2015, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar described the talks on the Rafale fighter as “discussions under way between the French company,” “our Ministry of Defence” and “the HAL which is involved in this.” The talks concerned 126 aircraft under a tender from 2007. Two days later in Paris, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that he had asked President François Hollande for 36 Rafales, “the ready-to-fly models.”
In May 2015 Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said: “I have saved the cost of 90 Rafales.”