Bengaluru, Oct 14 (IANS): An indefinite strike by about 20,000 employees of the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) for wage revision on Monday grounded the operations of the state-run defence behemoth across the country, a union official said.

"The response to our strike call has been overwhelming with all the employees abstaining from work in the nine production locations across the country," HAL trade union general secretary S. Chandrasekhar told IANS here.

The wage revision is due since January 1, 2017, as the previous two revisions were in 2012 and 2007 for 5 years, respectively.

A company official, however, claimed that majority of the employees reported to work at the Korwa avionics division in Uttar Pradesh.

The 55-year-old aerospace major has six production complexes in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Koraput in Odisha, Korwa and Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh and Nashik in Maharashtra and 3 research and development (R&D) centres across the country.