In a major milestone, the first prototype of India's indigenously developed civilian passenger aircraft Saras was rolled out at a ceremony in Bangalore on Tuesday.

The 14-seater, multi-role aircraft with feeder airline and air-taxi operations as its primary roles rolled out of the hangar at National Aerospace Laboratories, signifying a major step in India's entry into the civil aviation market.

Saras is expected to take its maiden flight by the end of June 2003, top officials of NAL which has developed the aircraft, said at the ceremony.

Council for Scientific and Industrial Research director general Dr R A Mashelkar, department of science and technology secretary V S Ramamurthy, and NAL director B R Pai were present on the occasion.

T S Prahallad, former NAL director, said the second prototype of Saras would fly in March 2004 and between the first two prototypes, 400 hours of flight testing was required before seeking certification from the Director General of Civil Aviation.

He said Indian Air Force was 'taking interest' in Saras for its special missions and talks were on with them.

It would take two years for commercial production of Saras, Prahallad told reporters.

Limited series production of six Saras aircraft for IAF would begin in two years and the first one would be delivered in 2006 after which the market potential for the aircraft would be explored.

To a query, he said the Saras project was hit by sanctions (imposed in the wake of India's nuclear tests) resulting in a time overrun of about 18 months.

Sanctions did not affect much in terms of cost as it overran only by 4-5 per cent, he said.

NAL officials said production of Saras developed under a Rs 131.38 crore (Rs 1.313 billion) project of the Union government is likely to be taken up by public sector Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, which is a major technical partner in the programme.

Saras can also be used in several roles, including as an executive transport, light package carrier, remote sensing, coast guard, border patrol and air ambulance, they said.