After meeting some of the past and present HAL employees on Saturday, Congress president Rahul Gandhi slammed Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for questioning the experience of HAL in building fighter jets for being denied the offset contracts in Rafale deal.
Speaking to reporters, Rahul said, “Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman talked about lack of experience of HAL, but she did not have anything to say about the lack of experience of Anil Ambani “who has never built a plane in his life.”
“HAL has no debt, Ambani has Rs 45,000 crores of debt. HAL has been working for 78 years. His company has been working for 12 days. So, she has no comment about the person who got the contract,” Rahul said.
Escalating his campaign against the Modi Government over Rafale deal, Rahul accused it of destroying the “strategic asset” State-run aerospace company.
Rahul questioned as to why the order was taken away from HAL, when it had all the experience. “Why hasn’t the work given to them? Why HAL is being destroyed by Anil Ambani, that is the question.”
“They are insulted and hurt because their hand work of over 78 years has been insulted and questioned by the Government of India through the Defence Minister. So the first thing is that they expect an apology from the Defence Minister for insulting HAL. We understand that the Defence Minister is not going to apologise,” he added.
On alleged corruption, he said HAL was one of the “modern temples” of India and it was being destroyed “because of corruption that Narendra Modi is doing to help Anil Ambani”.
“Every single person here made it very clear that they have the experience. They have the understanding and Mr Anil Ambani does not have the understanding,” Rahul said, referring to the HAL interaction… “we are here to defend the people who are defending the nation. From the Government, we have to defend HAL,” he said.
HAL employees union said that an interaction was sought with the employees, but they have decided not take part as the union was apolitical.
“We had got communication from Congress office, but we can’t take sides for a political party being Government employees, and our union is an independent union, we are not affiliated to any political party,” the union’s general secretary Suryadevara Chandra Shekhar said.
