No Manmohan, Sarkozy meet at G-20 fuels bid speculation

(The Pioneer) : A bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Cannes on the sidelines of the G-20 summit could not take place on Friday thereby leading to speculation that France has lost the race for the `48,000 crore MMRCA deal.
The two leaders were expected to meet at about 10 am (IST) and the meeting was rescheduled for 1 pm. However, the time was again was changed to 4.00 pm and finally the two leaders could not meet.  While this scheduling and rescheduling was going on in France, the defence ministry opened the bids for the MMRCA at about 3.00 p.m. in New Delhi.  Rafale(France) and Eurofighter(consortium of UK, Germany, Spain and Italy) are the two contenders for the mega deal and their unit prices were announced by the defence ministry in the presence of the representatives of the two competitors.

While the defence ministry and two contenders refrained to talk to media about the price issue, the stakeholders informed their respective governments about the proceedings of the bid opening meeting, sources said.