Contract detail documents of the Rafale Deal has taken winds out of the sails of Gandhi’s allegations that undue leverage was given to Anil Ambani-led Reliance Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG)
New Delhi: According to the contract detail documents of the Rafale Deal given to India this March by the French government during President Emmanuel Macron’s New Delhi visit, it has emerged that DRDO would be the biggest beneficiary of the deal so far as offsets go.
The report was titled, ’36 Rafale Offsets & Make India’.
The revelation takes the winds out of the sails of Congress-president Rahul Gandhi’s allegations against the Narendra Modi government, suggesting that undue leverage was given to Anil Ambani-led Reliance Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) in spite of being relatively new to the field of defence manufacturing. Congress had alleged that in favouring ADAG, PSU Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) had been ignored.
Of all the big players involved in the tender, such as Tata, Mahindra, Godrej, PSUs BEL, HAL, Snecma-HAL, DRDO would bag the biggest offsets contract from the project to develop Kaveri jet engine with Safran (previously Snecma). The Kaveri engine project was stalled in 2014 when it failed to provide adequate thrust required for duty in unmanned vehicles and combat jets. This will make the engine flightworthy and would be used to power India’s own multi-role combat aircraft Tejas too.
In all 72 companies are involved in the project offsets worth Rs30,000 crore and is to be shared between Dassault, Safran and Thales. The latter two are partners of Dassault. Safran would be involved in making the engine—the M88, aeronautical components and equipment as also some engineering, series and software development. Thales would be involved in developing the radar for the aircraft and avionics integration.
Read Exclusive COVID-19 Coronavirus News updates, at MyNation.