Kind of cute how you try to give importance to the JF17, when you confirm often enough that PAF has not the money to make costly upgrades. So even IF there would be French stuff on offer, funds would be the biggest issue to start with. Not to forget that the French last time when these offers were rumored, were pressured by the US not to provide high techs with the fear that they could end up in Chinese hands. So these 2 points alone would make clear why India don't really need to bother about such reports.
More importantly, when India would had panicked, logic tells us that we have fast tracked to seal the Rafale deal and that Dassault wouldn't need to move away from their earlier statements of not taking any responsibility. The opposite however happened!
MoD remains strict on not signing the deal without Dassault complying and Dassault now jumped to a compromise offer, to take partial responsibility, by being co-contractor. The devil however lies in the details of the offer and we will have to see how the MoD reacts to that offer, but it gets more than clear, that the JF17 has no relation here.
How does that relate in any way to HAL? HAL didn't made the deal , nor included parts in the first 50, since they were mainly assmbled by kits provided from Irkut. The fact that we have issue with the Russians MFDs and that HAL produced MKIs however use Samtel MFDs, plays even in favour for HAL, since it shows the importance of indigenizising the MKI with as much Indian parts as possible, to not be dependent on the quality of Russian parts.