F-18 and Eurofighter was never considered earlier for MMRCA Tender : Offical

IDRW NEWS : What could be quite a revelation ,Indian air force official  have informed idrw.org ,that until end of 2005 , F-18 and Euro-fighter was never considered for MMRCA Tender since  they did not fit into air forces requirements  then , Initially Air force wanted aircraft in medium weight category that included offers from French on Mirage-2000-5 ,Lockheed martin with their F-16 C/D and Russian offer of upgraded Mig-29SMT .
But opening of the Tender to multiple vendors by then Defence Minister Pranab Mukherji in UPA-1 Government insured that tender became larger ,and Medium Weight category was no longer mandatory since heavier class fighter aircrafts entered the race .
Official also told that opening of the tender surely lead to further delays and set back whole process by 5 years ,which was considerable amount of time lost to procure aircraft’s for a shrinking air force fleet , he also pointed out that  Request for Proposal (RFP) actually favoured single engine fighters due to its emphasis on life cycle costs,since life cycle costs of a single engine fighter are substantially lower than that of twin engine fighter.
With Pak-FA and AMCA 5th generation fighter deal all done and work on them have already began and IAF is all set to procure and operate them by turn of this decade , official admitted that MMRCA tender and the aircraft’s have lost all its shine and will be a second fiddle to MKI and PAK-FA in near future in IAF fleet .