You are confusing several different things here. None of the companies you mentioned have helped to design tejas. Yes, they have supplied components and sub-components that go into the tejas. GE with its engine, ELTA (possibly, not sure) with the radar and so on.
But the entire process of designing the aircraft was done in house by India. The FBW system was supposed to be designed with the help of lockmart, and way into that exercise, when we did the nuclear tests, Lockmart booted out all the scientists from USA, and kept the blueprints. This set back the Tejas program by several years. Then we had to design the entire digital quad redundant FBW system ourselves, which was not envisaged initially. And this is where a delay of a few years happened.
However, we did design the FBW system successfully. So successfully in fact, that the same was used later on an F-16 (VISTA) testbed, and performed much better than the original used on the F-16.
So this person is right in saying that sanctions delayed the LCA program. But the fact is that the program has still suffered from unacceptable delays, and unkept promises. Not all the delays can be attributed to the post-pokhran sanctions.
Frankly, the LCA saga has taken India the right amount of time that a reasonable person would have expected, for a country with no aerospace experience. All the heartburn happened due to the fact that HAL kept promising unrealistic timeframes, and adopting a bite-off-more-than-you-can-chew attitude, by trying to develop a 4th multirole gen fighter in house from scratch. They should have lowered their ambitions initially, and gotten a few squadrons of not-so-capable LCAs into service, and progressively upgraded them. If they had done that, the IAF would not be facing the desperate squadron shortage that it is facing today, and a lot of money could have been saved.
But then, hindsight is always 20/20. I am glad that despite all the delays, India has produced a world class light fighter that can compare with any 4th gen light fighter, and created an ecosystem of aerospace experience in the country. The foundations for a competitive aerospace industry has been built now. If the program is managed well from now on, the IAF can still have hundreds of home grown fighters in its arsenal, saving precious forex reserves from going abroad.
Both HAL and IAF will have to be innovative in how to use this home grown baby properly, and develop different variants of them. Delayed, but very much worth it.
