The NDA government's decision to enter into a government-to-government deal with France to buy 36 Rafale warplanes was announced in April 2015 with the deal signed a little over a year later.
A day after former chief of state-run plane maker Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) T Suvarna Raju said Rafale fighters could have been built in India, Congress stepped up its attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and demanded resignation of Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
Highly placed government sources, however, disputed former HAL chief's claims. They said that the work share between the HAL and the French Dassault Aviation was never agreed upon. "HAL was a member of the Contract Negotiations Committee of the Ministry of Defence (MoD). There were many major areas of disagreement between HAL and the Dassault Aviation (DA)," sources said.
They further said the disagreement was brought to the notice of MoD in a letter dated October 2012, by the HAL. In another letter dated July 2014, HAL also highlighted one major unresolved issue regarding responsibility sharing between M/S DA and HAL for licence Manufacture of aircraft. In the same letter the man hours required for manufacture of various components of the aircraft in HAL was also a point of disagreement between the two. "The claim about lower Life Cycle Cost made by the former HAL chief is completely presumptive," said the sources.
On Tuesday, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said HAL was "dropped" from the deal when the UPA was in power, because it couldn't agree on terms of production with Dassault.
Addressing media briefing here, Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari said even if one goes on by the man hours required to build an aircraft, the labour cost in India would have cost lowered the cost of aircraft to one fourth that in France. "So even if twice the number of man-hours were required, in actual terms, the cost would have been still less. So in light of such a clear unequivocal statement of facts by the former HAL head, who has challenged the government that if you have the conviction of courage, please put all the files in the public domain and the files will speak for themselves," he said.
The NDA government's decision to enter into a government-to-government deal with France to buy 36 Rafale warplanes was announced in April 2015 with the deal signed a little over a year later. This replaced the UPA regime's decision to buy 126 Rafale aircraft, 108 of which were to be made in India by HAL using parts imported from France.
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