RAFALE DEALMaharashtra chief minister Deven-
dra Fadnavis had handed over the land
allotment letter to Anil at a function
at the MIHAN SEZ, in the presence of
Union transport minister Nitin Gad-
kari. The group announced an invest-
ment of Rs 6,500 crore to set up a green-
field aerospace project. “The project at
MIHAN will be the largest greenfield
project not only in India but in Southeast
Asia,” Anil had said at the function.
The A mbani f ir m planned to acquire
the first land parcel of 104 acres for Rs
63 crore. It paid Rs 25 crore when the
project was allotted to them, but missed
the payment of the next instalment of Rs
17 crore in mid-2016. The project was a
non-starter as the financial dues to Ma-
harashtra Airport Development Com-
pany (MADC) ballooned to Rs 38 crore
at the end of the financial year 2017. The
deal with Dassault Aviation came as a
lifeline for a firm struggling to pay its
land dues. Da ssault R eliance Aerospace
Limited (DRAL) was incorporated in
early 2017 and announced at Aero In-
dia in Bengaluru on February 14, 2017,
where Anil posed for the press before
taking a sortie in a Rafale aircraft.
Eric Trappier, chairman of Dassault
Aviation France, was designated chair-
man, and Anil Ambani co-chairman
of DRAL, in which RAL holds 51 per
cent stake and Dassault 49 per cent. In
October 2017, Anil and Trappier laid
the foundation stone for the facility to
produce parts for the Falcon business
jets. A senior Dassault official explains
why they chose Anil Ambani’s company
for the JV despite his firm’s financial
woes. “He was the only business house
who had land readily available, and an
SEZ near an airport from where aircraft
could be built and rolled out for testing
in future,” he says.
On February 21, 2017, Anil Ambani
had met with Hollande at the Élysée Pal-
ace in Paris. Photographs of the meeting
the President’s office released officially
showed Hollande giving Anil a warm
two-handed handshake. A Reliance of-
ficial describes it as a brief meeting andone in which various initiatives by Reli-
ance in the field of energy and defence
involving French companies were dis-
cussed. “No other discussions whatso-
ever, including Reliance Entertainment,
took place during this meeting,” he says.
By 2018, w ith creditors k nock ing on
the doors of their debt-ridden shipyard,
and the government choosing HAL for
a JV partner to make Russian helicop-
ters and state-owned Goa Shipyard Ltd
to build frigates, DRAL remains one
of the last aces in Anil Ambani’s pack
of companies. It’s still an attractive bet
for future orders for additional Rafales,
another contract for 57 fighter jets for
the Indian Navy where the Rafale is a
contender or even for assembling Falcon
business jets.HOW MUCH DOES RELIANCE MAKE
FROM THE OFFSET PARTNERSHIP?
In March this year, the French govern-
ment submitted a six-page document list
of 72 offset partners for the Rafale deal
to the Indian government during Presi-