"Dassault Aviation has freely chosen to make a partnership with India’s Reliance Group. This joint-venture, Dassault Reliance Aerospace Ltd (DRAL), was created February 10, 2017," the French company clarified.
We freely chose to make a partnership with Reliance: Dassault Aviation on Rafale controversy
NEW DELHI: Rafale manufacturer Dassault Aviation has said that the document quoted by French portal Mediapart was a disclosure the company made to labour unions on its obligation to shift work to comply with Indian offset commitments following the Rafale deal. While the Congress linked the fresh documents to its allegations that Reliance Defence was ‘gifted’ offsets for the Rs 59,000 crore deal, Dassault emphasised that it freely chose the partnership and was in talks with “100-odd other potential partners” as well.
“In compliance with French regulations, chief operating officer Loïk Segalen informed, May 11, 2017, the Central Works Council of the creation of the DRAL (Dassault Reliance Aerospace Limited) joint venture in order to fulfil some of the offsets commitment,” Dassault said in a statement in response to the portal report.
On the Congress allegation that the document was proof that the Rafale deal was conditional to offsets being given to Reliance, Dassault said that it merely stated that work was being shifted to an Indian JVto meet offset rules.
“In order to deliver some of these offsets, Dassault Aviation has decided to create a joint venture. Dassault Aviation has freely chosen to make a partnership with India’s Reliance Group. Other partnerships have been signed with other companies such as BTSL, DEFSYS, Kinetic, Mahindra, Maini, SAMTEL...other negotiations are ongoing with a 100-odd other potential partners,” the company stated.
The Rafale deal, which was signed in September 2016, has an offset clause that mandates 50% of the contract value to be invested in India. Dassault has stated that as part of efforts to meet these commitments, its DRAL plant in Nagpur was initiated in October 2017.
“This plant will manufacture parts for Falcon 2000 business jets and, in a second step, parts for Rafale aircraft. An initial team of Indian managers have been trained for six months to our manufacturing processes in our plant in Biarritz (France)….the first Falcon 2000 parts will be delivered by end 2018,” the company stated.
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