HAL employees slam Modi govt, say nothing has been done to better the condition of HAL

The Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Welfare Forum on Thursday slammed the Modi government stating that there was a conspiracy to shutdown the PSU HAL by the Central government.

HAL employees claim that the Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is trying to build a false narrative regarding HAL’s capabilities and its refusal to guarantee the manufacture of the Rafale aircraft. They stated that this was the government’s way of misleading the nation regarding the Rafale deal.

They also met the Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday and thanked him for raising the issues in the Parliament.

The Cash-strapped state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) on Sunday, January 6, said it had taken an overdraft of ₹962 crore. HAL Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) R Madhavan had earlier told the media in Bengaluru that while HAL was always a cash rich company, its cash in hand had gone into negative. The Indian Air Force, HAL’s biggest buyer, has not paid the company since September, 2017 and already owes HAL ₹14,500 Crore, the CMD had added.

According to a report in News18, Renuka, one of the HAL employees said in the press conference held on Thursday,“When in their annual report Dassault chairperson had claimed that HAL was its partner, when Dassault and HAL had signed mutual workshare agreement, when HAL can build a 25 tonne Sukhoi, then what was the difficulty in making Rafale jets.”

A statement issued by the Forum also suggested that Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s recent statement in the Parliament that ₹73,000 crore of orders for HAL were in the pipeline was misleading.

“We have total orders worth ₹1.28 lakh crore. Of this ₹26,570 crore of orders have come from the Modi government. This effectively means that HAL is running only on the orders of the UPA.”

The statement was shared by Prashant Kumar, a journalist on social media. You can read the full statement here: