New Delhi, Sep 20 (UNI) Rebutting former Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Chief Suvarna Raju's claim that the state-owned Defence undertaking could have easily manufactured Rafale fighter jets had the government managed to close the original negotiations with Dassault Aviation, the government on Thursday said that the former HAL chief’s statement was factually incorrect.
“There were many areas of disagreement between HAL and Dassault Aviation. HAL in its letter to Ministry of Defence on October 11, 2012 brought out disagreements pertaining to workshare between them.
In 2014, the public sector unit had also highlighted a major unresolved issue relating to responsibility sharing between them for license manufacture of aircraft,' sources in Defence Ministry said.
The companies also had differences over man-hours required for manufacturing of various components of the fighter jet. “Therefore, there are contradictions in the claims attributed to former Chief of HAL,” it added.
The sources further stated that since workshare between HAL and Dassault Aviation was never agreed upon, the statement of Mr Raju’s claiming lower life cycle costs is completely presumptive. “Due to all these differences, the proposals for 126 MMRCA could not be progressed further,” the sources said.
Talking to a leading English daily, the former HAL chief had said, “When HAL can build a 25-tonne Sukhoi-30, a fourth-generation fighter jet that forms the mainstay of the air force, from raw material stage, then what are we talking about? We could have definitely done it (licence produced the Rafale jets).”
After Mr Raju’s remark, Congress President Rahul Gandhi accused Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman of lying and demanded her resignation.
In September 2016, the Modi-government had signed an Inter Governmental Agreement (IGA) with French government for acquiring 36 Rafale jets at cost of Rs 59,000 crore.
The BJP-led NDA government scrapped the deal, initiated in 2012 during the erstwhile UPA government, of purchasing 18 aircrafts in fly-away condition and manufacturing another 108 in India.
UNI ASH/ VT 1837