Hard to tell from a review that is looking back 30 years if the IAF was a voluntary fence-sitter (no confidence in domestic capability) or forced to sit on the fence (with other arms of MoD wanting to lead the charge on a prestigious program for self-glory or whatever). The credibility of such a review is also low because how can you sum up so many decades in a few pages.
It is almost impossible that ADA/HAL indeed offered pole position to IAF in running the program and IAF politely declined saying no we control the purse strings, but you ADA/HAL go right ahead and run the show without us. The fact is such control was never offered to IAF! There is no reason for the IAF to refuse given the example set by IN from very early on. There was only bickering over control and the program became everyone's stepchild, until it turned the corner.
The IAF was wrong only in its vision for itself, in not setting up facilities to design aircraft and being merely flying & maintaining air assets- which is big in itself given the number of platforms it operates and their supply chains, but they should have dreamt bigger.
HAL/DRDO probably avoided giving over control, for fear the IAF may pull the plug on the program- fully aware of their own capability, they would have of course known their time commitments to IAF were all hot air.
It is a fairly straightforward assumption that in the fight between the AF on one side and scientists/babus of MoD over a botched up program looking for a scapegoat 30 years later- the soldier was made the fall guy.
