Bengaluru: According to party official announcement on Friday, Congress President Rahul Gandhi is slated to hold an interaction with some working and retired employees of the state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) in Bengaluru today over the issue of the defence company not being allowed to take the contract of the Rafale fighter jet deal in partnership with Dassault Aviation of France.

“Rahul will meet and interact with about 100 working and retired employees of HAL at Minsk Square facing its corporate office in the city centre on Saturday evening to ascertain their views and concerns on the company not getting the Rafale contract,” party’s state unit spokesman Ravi Gowda told News Agencies.

The police of the city has permitted the Congress party to hold such a meeting for a time period of about 90 minutes from 3:30 p.m. onwards at the location of Square circle where a replica of the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas, manufactured by HAL for Indian Air Force (IAF) is kept for public display.

“Rahul wants to know firsthand how the HAL employees feel about losing out the Rafale contract and how the company would make up for the loss of offset orders from the French aerospace major (Dassault Aviation),” Mr Gowda said.

As the company had issued an advisory to all its employees not to attend the meeting under the employment rules and service conditions, but some of them will meet Mr. Gandhi along with their retired colleagues and express their concerns over the deal and many other issues.

“As the employment rules and service conditions do not apply to the retired personnel, we have no say in their meeting with Gandhi. Regarding working employees, some of them may meet him as union members of the HAL Employees Association,” an official told News Agencies.

The Rafale fighter jet deal has become a major issue ahead of the Lok Sabha elections due to be held in mid-year 2019. Congress accuses the ruling party of BJP of huge corruption in the deal, while the party refutes such claims. The deal was originally initiated and finalized by Congress led-UPA government when it was in power. But when BJP came to power along with its coalition parties, the party dropped the earlier deal and planned to buy a total of 36 fighter jets and some of them were planned to be manufactured in India in collaboration with an Indian company.

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