Rafale deal: Jet secrecy pact renewed in March, cost details already known

Experts say the scope of that pact - i.e. the 'exchange of classified and protected information between the two countries'

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government, in declining to provide commercial details of its purchase of 36 Rafale fighters for the Indian Air Force (IAF), has sheltered behind a 2008 confidentiality agreement between New Delhi and Paris. But on Friday, while arguing in Parliament that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) had signed the secrecy pact, the government kept silent on the fact that the agreement had expired this year. Also, the government did not mention that on March 28, during French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit, it renewed the pact for a decade more. That detail is buried in