Mukherjee's remark on UK's 'peanuts' aid triggers row

London: The aid from Britain to India must be cancelled immediately, demanded some British parliamentarians after India's finance minister said they don't need it. The row broke out after India favoured a French firm for a multi-billion-pound fighter plane order.

Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said that New Delhi should "voluntarily" give up the £280 million (Dh1.625 billion) a year it gets from Britain.

Unacceptable

"We do not require the aid. It is peanuts in our total development spending," the Daily Mail quoted Mukherjee as saying. India has given the preferred bidder status to French firm Dassault ahead of an European consortium that includes British defence giant BAE Systems.

MP Philip Davies sought for immediate cancellation of the Indian aid programme.

"India spends tens of billions on defence and hundreds of millions a year on a space programme — in those circumstances it would be unacceptable to give them aid even if they were begging us for it," Davies said.

Another parliamentarian, Douglas Carswell said this was "concrete proof that Britain's aid programme is run in the interests of Whitehall officials and the DFID machine".

Patronising lectures

"The fact is that India's economy is growing much faster than our own. We should be encouraging free trade with them and trying to learn from them rather than handing out patronising lectures," he said.

Added MP Peter Bone: "India has its own foreign aid programme. So it is absurd for us to be still giving them aid. They are more than capable of looking after their own issues."