Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar today said that the Director General (Acquisition) will draw up a list as required under the new policy and hence old cases will also be looked into.
“That does not mean they will be taken out. Don’t interpret… they will be examined. What is the status, how many years they have been blacklisted for and why they were blacklisted,” Parrikar told PTI on the sidelines of a seminar here.
He said that as per the new policy, there has to be a new list.
“So the list will have to be re-ascertained,” the Minister said.
The review will include about a dozen firms that came under blanket blacklisting in the previous regime, a move which the forces were unhappy about as it proved detrimental to their modernisation plans.
Some of the firms like Singapore Technologies have approached the courts seeking removal of blacklisting.
Singapore Technologies’ argument is that it has been wrongly blacklisted since no contract was ever awarded to it and neither is it mentioned in the charge sheet filed by the CBI in connection with a bribery case involving the then Ordinance Factory Board chief.
Under its new liberalised blacklisting policy for arms companies, India will now be open to doing business even with a banned firm if there is no alternative available to its weapon system or equipment in the market.
This can be done on the grounds of national security, operational military readiness and export obligations, after the vice-chief of the Service concerned, the chief of the integrated defence staff or the additional secretary (defence production) signs a certificate to that effect and gets permission from the “competent authority”, who is the Defence Minister.
Another key element of the new policy is that unlike the blanket ban of 10 years, the government has said that ban on serious defaulters will be for minimum five years.
The policy does not mention the maximum time period for ban.
Called the ‘Guidelines of the Ministry of Defence for Penalties in Business Dealings with Entities’, the policy, which has been in the works for long, aims to ensure probity and transparency in defence deals without affecting the modernisation plans. .
PTI