HAL-Storm Over Rafale Deal

Indias aerospace PSU giant is starved for orders and struggling to stay afloat. Its also now caught in a political crossfire between the Congress and the government.

- Sandeep Unnithan

Congress president Rahul Gandhi continued his barrage against the Modi government’s purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets with a strategically-timed public meeting. He addressed over 100 workers of PSU monolith Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) outside their corporate headquarters in Bengaluru on October 12. Rahul’s public meeting came just a day after Union defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s trip to Paris for the annual India-France defence dialogue, where she was photographed at a Dassault facility assembling Rafale jets for India.

‘HAL is India’s strategic asset. The future of India’s aerospace industry has been destroyed by snatching Rafale from HAL and gifting it to Anil Ambani,’ he tweeted. At the meeting, Rahul called HAL a ‘ temple of modern India’, a line his great grandfather coined for India’s public sector undertakings. Rahul was batting for the desi PSU giant while the government favoured foreign company Dassault and its Indian partner Reliance Defence, which he alleged was getting all the (offsets) business worth Rs 30,000 crore from the Rs 59,000 crore jet deal. The offsets are in fact being split between the four partners in the contract—Jet designer and integrator Dassault, electronics firm Thales, engine maker Safran and weapons maker MBDA, who will tie up with their Indian partners. HAL has partnered with Safran for the offsets, several of which are still being negotiated. (Dassault CEO Eric Trappier clarified on October 12 that Rel iance would get only 10 per cent of the company’s share of offset contracts, estimated to be Rs 6,500 crore.)