Biggest defence scam

To be fair, rupee has declined by a lot in the last 10y

Your interpretation is incorrect , I actually know people who originally negotiated the contract , the corruption that was attempted for 10 years and the price escalation that happens when you try to buy something in 2016 instead of 2006 because your force levels are struggling and you have to buy what's available at the price it is. There was no corruption by BJP here

TL;DR NDA's deal is far better . I see an XUV700 can be bought for ₹ 14 lakhs, but I can also pay upto ₹ 26 lakhs for it. Does it make sense for anyone to go for top variant when base one can be had for close to half the price? . The 42k cr (₹ 333 cr / fighter) price quoted above is of the initial 'soft' agreement arrived in Jan 2012. That price only includes a acquisition cost, without any costs of parts and maintenance for several years to come. Moreoever it didn't include the costs of improvements in weapons package, better electro-optic systems, superior avionics and many IAF-specific customizations that increase the potency of these fighters significantly, all of which were included in NDA's deal. . But the biggest blunder of UPA was complete misunderstanding of contract in which Dassault Aviation was essentially exempted of any accountability of the quality of the 110 aircrafts to be manufactured by HAL in India. This glaring omission meant that IAF was uncertain if at any given point of time we would even have more 50 aircrafts available in combat-ready condition (recall that serviceability and uptime was a major factor why IAF narrowed down on Rafale in the first place). When HAL's revised estimates of man-hours needed to produce and maintain the fighters was factored in, the deal had already ballooned up to ₹ 1.86 lakh crores (₹ 1444 cr / fighter) by Jan 2014 (4.4x of the 42k cr price quoted in above article). . Needless to say, inflation plays a big part too and therefore the numbers aren't closely comparable. Yet the final price of NDA's deal at 60k cr (₹ 1666 / fighter) is only 15% above the advanced stage price UPA's deal, notwithstanding the inflation & overall equipment improvement. . So indeed once you understand the overall higher oomph offered by the AX7 variant of XUV700 (and assume it comes with free service + parts for first 5 years), you begin realizing why it costs about double the 5Str baseline model. Of course the this stupid analogy doesn't capture the criticality of military equipment, operations and strategy which considers nation's security, and not expenditure, of paramount interest. . In the end all I can say is the author of above article either failed to research enough on the topic or decided to purposefully obscure facts & figures to unknown ulterior motives. . Jai Hind.

What is the source of these numbers?

I remember there was some discussion around the price tag that the Congress guys ommited calculations , plane per price is also taking into account many factors other than just the plane. Did you check that angle Op?

Inflation babu bhaiya

Inflation plus configuration is different. Earlier govt bought inferior, which probably was good enough for that time not now

Do you know anything about the word "inflation"?

Inflation

Do a better research man . You need better understanding to understand these defence acquisitions and the geopolitical standings of the countries and the government relations plus the other forces acting behind.