Former French President Reveals They Had “No Choice” But To Choose Anil Ambani’s Reliance In The Rafale Deal

Why was Reliance Defense chosen to build the Indian Rafale jets rather than the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Company? This question was posed by the opposition many times when the topic came up.

According to the former French President François Hollande said that they did not have a choice in the matter.

In an article published by French journal Mediapart, Hollande on a question about who selected Reliance as a partner and why said it was the Indian government that proposed Reliance’s name and Dassault had no choice but to take the company given to it.

“We did not have a say in that. The Indian government proposed this service group, and Dassault negotiated with Ambani. We did not have a choice, we took the interlocutor we were given,” said Hollande.

The article was tweeted by French Newspaper LeMonde journalist Julien Boissou:

Former French President François Hollande contradicts the Indian government. According to him, Anil Ambani (Reliance Defence) was not chosen by Dassault : "We didn't have a choice. We took the partner that was given to us" #Rafalehttps://t.co/YX1rMQlqvk

— julien bouissou (@jubouissou) September 21, 2018

OUR CHOICE SAYS DASSAULT AVIATION:

This statement has sparked a fuel among the political parties and was rushing to verify his statement.

And the Dassault Aviation under whom the Indian Rafale jets were being made has stated that they chose the Reliance company.

In a statement, Dassault Aviation said: “This offsets contract is delivered in compliance with the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) 2016 regulations. In this framework, and in accordance with the policy of Make in India, Dassault Aviation has decided to make a partnership with India’s Reliance Group. This is Dassault Aviation’s choice, as CEO Eric Trappier had explained in an interview published in MINT newspaper on April 17, 2018. This partnership has led to the creation of the Dassault Reliance Aerospace Ltd (DRAL) joint-venture in February 2017.

Dassault Aviation and Reliance have built a plant in Nagpur for manufacturing parts for Falcon and Rafale aircraft. The Nagpur site was chosen because of the availability of land with direct access to an airport runway, an essential condition of aeronautic activities.

Other partnerships have been signed with other companies such as BTSL, DEFSYS, Kinetic, Mahindra, Maini, SAMTEL,. Other negotiations are ongoing with hundred-odd other potential partners.”