The confusion seems to spring from misinterpretation of a Jane's Defence Weekly article - Indians Fly new Soviet MiG-35s by Nick Cook and Yossef Bodansky (JDW, 13 Aug 1988, page 235).
"In May 1988, IAF pilots were allowed to fly the MIG-35. Believed to be at an advanced stage in its development programme, the fighter was on offer to India as a fallback solution to its indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) programme."
Soviet Relations with India and Vietnam, Ramesh Thakur & Carlyle A. Thayer, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1992, page 97
Since the Indian Air Force introduced MiG-29s into service in 1985, the aircraft in question were clearly something else - possibly the MiG-29S? The use of MiG-35 may suggest that the Soviets were already applying that designation to potential export versions of the MiG-29 in the late 1980s. Obviously, the current MiG-35 export variants came much later.
The Krila write probably assumed that the IAF pilots were testing a Soviet fighter which more closely matched LCA requirements. In reality, the Soviets had no such genuinely lightweight fighter aircraft to offer then - certainly not the Ye-8!
