I will give you a datapoint, among many. The Indian govt. recently awarded a critical contract for modernizing the Indian Air Force to a company owned by Anil Ambani who is the brother of Mukesh Ambani, owner of Jio. The Anil Ambani (who has since declared bankruptcy) company had zero experience in defence or aeronautics, yet it was chosen over India's state owned HAL which has decades of aeronautical expertise.

This is incorrect. You are mixing two separate (but related) things.

Under the terms of the original Rafale deal[1], HAL was supposed to manufacture/assemble Rafale aircraft in India. This deal never materialized.

A new deal was made under whose terms, Dassault and others were to supply 36 Rafale aircraft in fly-away condition in return to which, they were to invest 50% of the cost of the deal (or about €3.9 billion) back in India, under an offset clause.

Of this €3.9 billion, €100 million was awarded [2] to Dassault Reliance Aviation limited as an offset contract to manufacture components for a passenger aircraft (Dassault Falcon 2000). This was a decision by Dassault, not the Government of India.

There were about 30 offset partners among which Reliance was one. This contract was worth about 3% of the entire investment under the offset clause.

So Reliance was not "chosen over" HAL.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_MRCA_competition

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafale_deal_controversy

All the petitions regarding wrongdoings in the deal were dismissed by the Supreme Court. The reason cited was that it was not the government who was responsible to choose an Indian partner for the “offset clause” of the deal, it was Dassault who entered into a JV with Anil Ambani’s company.

>The reason cited was that it was not the government who was responsible to choose an Indian partner for the “offset clause” of the deal, it was Dassault who entered into a JV with Anil Ambani’s company.

Because the Indian govt. forced Dassault to deal with Ambani. We know this because the French President literally said so.

“We did not have a say in this,” Mediapart quoted Mr Hollande saying. “It was the Indian government that proposed this service group, and Dassault negotiated with Ambani. We did not have a choice. We took the interlocutor that was given to us.”

https://m.economictimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/india-p...

https://www.ft.com/content/4e95c46c-bdb6-11e8-94b2-17176fbf9...

That's false. Anil Ambani's firm was chosen as an offset partner by Dassault, not by the Government. HAL wasn't interested in working as an offset partner.

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/rafale-deal-anil-ambanis-fir...

> The Anil Ambani (who has since declared bankruptcy) company had zero experience in defence or aeronautics

The company that you are talking about came into existence after Anil Ambani got stake in Pipavav Defense who already had experience working with Indian navy[1]. Anil Ambani's company has also signed an agreement with US Navy to repair their seventh fleet vessels[2].

1. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/pipavav-de...

2. https://www.livemint.com/Industry/VZqdl90t3NiQZHl7ccylwK/Rel...

No wonder the Supreme Court threw all these allegations right into the bin.

Anil Ambani's firm was chosen as an offset partner by Dassault, not by the Government.

"Chosen". As in forced to chose by the Indian govt. We know this because the French President literally said so in an interview.

“We did not have a say in this,” Mediapart quoted Mr Hollande saying. “It was the Indian government that proposed this service group, and Dassault negotiated with Ambani. We did not have a choice. We took the interlocutor that was given to us.”

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-natio...

https://www.ft.com/content/4e95c46c-bdb6-11e8-94b2-17176fbf9...

No, chosen means "chosen" in this context. Reliance defense is only one of the many offset partners. There is a long list of them. Did the government strong-arm Dassault to go with all of them? Something tells me that Dassault will have much better things to do.

https://akm-img-a-in.tosshub.com/indiatoday/images/bodyedito...

> “We did not have a say in this,”

French government said that there was no pressure on them. In such an important matter, I am more likely to believe the government than a news agency I have never heard of.

https://www.livemint.com/news/india/rafale-deal-france-says-...

The myth of Anil Ambani unduly influencing Rafale has been debunked many times over. This was blown out of proportion by Mr. Rahul Gandhi as he wanted an easy issue for the election.