More skeletons are tumbling out from the technical rooms of Rafale jet-mkaer Dassault Aviation, creating more headaches for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Completely contradicting the official statement from Dassault Aviation, two top technical heads have stated in an interview to India Scoops, that the entire technical staff team at Dassault Aviation were unhappy with the move to drop the Indian public sector undertaking Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) from the deal and instead partner with Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence Ltd.

According to the report, the experts, who did not want to be identified, said there were heated discussions between Dassault officials and several mails were sent over a week. The entire technical team wanted to work with HAL, but the decision was overruled by the top Dassault management headed by CEO Eric Trappier at the last minute. The experts said that Trappier and two others were adamant that they could only go with Reliance Defence and refused to listen to the advice of the departmental HODs.

“We were sure we would be working with HAL and not any other Indian company... At the last minute, we were informed that HAL was dropped and a new Indian company with whom we had never worked before and which had no expertise in manufacturing fighter aircraft was selected for the job,” the article quoted the officials as saying.

“The entire technical team and our team heads and HODs were shocked. It was a bolt from the blue. But we had to follow instructions. At the end of the day... if the top management decided to work with Reliance Defence, we had to toe the line... But it was CEO Eric Trappier and a couple of other officials’ at DA who took the decision to go with Reliance Defence,” the officials were further quoted as saying.