New Delhi, January 6: India’s Public Sector Unit Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) is awaiting formalisation of orders upto Rs 1 lakh crore, claimed Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during a discussion on Rafale deal in Lok Sabha on Friday. Though acceptance of necessity and clearance by defence Acquisition Council has been completed for some orders, no actual order has been placed yet, reported The Times of India. Rafale Deal Controversy: HAL Capable of Manufacturing Fighter Jets, Says Chairman R Madhavan.

Sitharaman in Lok Sabha told that orders worth Rs one lakh crore including Rs 50,000 crore order for procuring 83 Light Combat Aircraft Tejas and 15 combat helicopters worth Rs 3,000 are in the pipeline. In the case of aircraft, the approval is needed from the aeronautical development agency which is a time-consuming process.

Yesterday reports surfaced that the HAL s facing the financial crisis, and the company has taken a loan of about Rs 1,000 crore to pay salaries of its employees. As per reports, till March the total outstanding dues of the HAL from the armed forces could reach Rs 20,000 crore. HAL’s chairman while speaking to TOI said that the public sector unit has negative cash in hand, so the firm opted for an overdraft of Rs 1,000.

Meanwhile, reacting to the TOI report took a dig at Sitharaman and demanded her resignation. Gandhi in a tweet said, “When you tell one lie, you need to keep spinning out more lies to cover up the first one. In her eagerness to defend the PM's Rafale lie, the RM (Defence Minister) lied to the Parliament.” He further wrote, “Tomorrow (Monday), RM (Sitharaman) must place before Parliament documents showing Rs 1 lakh crore of government orders to HAL. Or resign.” The Congress president had earlier dismissed Sitharaman's arguments defending the deal to procure 36 fighter jets from France.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 06, 2019 04:06 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).