Defense Ministry Seeks Legal Opinion For Acquiring Carbines

[Zarvan]

Israeli Weapon Industries Galil Ace Carbine

New Delhi: The Defence Ministry has sought opinion from the Law Ministry on a six-year-old controversial process to acquire over 44,000 carbines.

Defence sources said the ministry is awaiting for a legal opinion on how to proceed further.

Four foreign firms had responded to the tender for 44,618 guns. The competition was eventually between Italian firm Beretta and Israeli firm IWI.


However, Beretta was disqualified in Army trials for carbines and IWI was the only firm that passed the test resulting in a single vendor situation.

Former Minister of State for Defence Rao Inderjit Singh had alleged that it was an "unfair selection" and wanted inclusion of Beretta in the list of vendors along with a CBI probe into the whole issue.

The Italian firm was disqualified because its carbines' laser sight did not match the quality requirements of the Army.

Singh had suggested laser sights could be procured from the state-run Bharat Electronics Ltd.

However, the Army and the Defence Ministry's acquisition wing argued that the terms of reference of the contract could not be changed to accommodate any vendor and would be illegal.

"The legal opinion will look into whether the ministry can go through with a single vendor or an alternative route needs to be followed," a source said.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/7781779_Def-Min-seeks-legal-opinion-for-acquiring-carbines-.html

 

[anant_s]

Post tender revision is not allowed and usually calls for re tender.
Legal opinion sought must be to explain operational emergency under which case if proven that requirement is really urgent and retender process can hamper preparedness, exception can be made.

 

[Zarvan]

Post tender revision is not allowed and usually calls for re tender.
Legal opinion sought must be to explain operational emergency under which case if proven that requirement is really urgent and retender process can hamper preparedness, exception can be made.

Sorry but the way you conducted the previous trials those have raised serious questions on transparency and now homemade Gun also rejected

 

[GuardianRED]

Sorry but the way you conducted the previous trials those have raised serious questions on transparency and now homemade Gun also rejected

So many reports with clams and counter clam regarding the Excaliber .... No Clear indication that it is rejected!

 

[anant_s]

way you conducted

Sir,
this is exactly the point i mentioned. When you conduct trials you have a set of parameters and acceptable values which need to be met. these become part of tender requirements and then bids are asked for.
Now here two things can happen. First nobody quotes against that tender (requirements could be too unrealistic, quantities too low, other miscellaneous reasons) or you get bids and when you proceed for trials, you find that none of those bids meet technical specifications. There is one more possibility that only one bid meets tender conditions (turned to single bid scenario).
Now here the procedure is to re-tender, sometime with revision of initial specifications.
However in case of turning to single tender, sometimes a decision can be taken to place order if:

1. It is proven that in spite of repeated attempts on single bid is received/getting qualified.
2. The technology is proprietary in nature.
3. The requirement is extremely urgent and delay in procurement (re-tendering included) can be a threat.

This clearly is a case of Single bid scenario and logically they should go for a re-tender, but (as the article mentioned), the process is going on for 6-7 years and now this hardware not available could be posing operational challenges. So government is seeking legal grounds of allowing this deal to go through.
Usually Audit agencies like CAG donot prefer this type of scenario. even operational emergency (unless there is a war going on and you need something immediately), these cases are treated as lack of planning properly.

have raised serious questions on transparency

I won't be that critical, infact government is following SOP. If there is a lacuna, it is out inability to procure hardware in time bound manner through Open bidding. This is also one reason why most of our high end hardware is coming through Government to Government deals but then again these are essentially Single Party procurement.
I sincerely hope our new DPP takes care of this mess we have created for ourselves.

@MilSpec @PARIKRAMA Gentlemen you can throw more light on issue.

 

[Zarvan]

Sir,
this is exactly the point i mentioned. When you conduct trials you have a set of parameters and acceptable values which need to be met. these become part of tender requirements and then bids are asked for.
Now here two things can happen. First nobody quotes against that tender (requirements could be too unrealistic, quantities too low, other miscellaneous reasons) or you get bids and when you proceed for trials, you find that none of those bids meet technical specifications. There is one more possibility that only one bid meets tender conditions (turned to single bid scenario).
Now here the procedure is to re-tender, sometime with revision of initial specifications.
However in case of turning to single tender, sometimes a decision can be taken to place order if:

1. It is proven that in spite of repeated attempts on single bid is received/getting qualified.
2. The technology is proprietary in nature.
3. The requirement is extremely urgent and delay in procurement (re-tendering included) can be a threat.

This clearly is a case of Single bid scenario and logically they should go for a re-tender, but (as the article mentioned), the process is going on for 6-7 years and now this hardware not available could be posing operational challenges. So government is seeking legal grounds of allowing this deal to go through.
Usually Audit agencies like CAG donot prefer this type of scenario. even operational emergency (unless there is a war going on and you need something immediately), these cases are treated as lack of planning properly.



I won't be that critical, infact government is following SOP. If there is a lacuna, it is out inability to procure hardware in time bound manner through Open bidding. This is also one reason why most of our high end hardware is coming through Government to Government deals but then again these are essentially Single Party procurement.
I sincerely hope our new DPP takes care of this mess we have created for ourselves.

@MilSpec @PARIKRAMA Gentlemen you can throw more light on issue.

I have serious doubts that only two carbines met your requirements that is impossible

 

[anant_s]

I have serious doubts that only two carbines met your requirements that is impossible

Since we don't know what parameters were not met by hardware, anything we say is speculation.
But i agree, it is difficult to believe that, in a global open tender, only 2 bids qualified.

 

[MilSpec]

My personal opinion is that, Berreta's option is a POS.

I have no idea why would any one pitch it against the Galil. The Galil have withstood the grueling challenges and like the TFB channel I too subscribe to the opinion that Galil is one ofthe most reliable systems in the world.

Sir,
this is exactly the point i mentioned. When you conduct trials you have a set of parameters and acceptable values which need to be met. these become part of tender requirements and then bids are asked for.
Now here two things can happen. First nobody quotes against that tender (requirements could be too unrealistic, quantities too low, other miscellaneous reasons) or you get bids and when you proceed for trials, you find that none of those bids meet technical specifications. There is one more possibility that only one bid meets tender conditions (turned to single bid scenario).
Now here the procedure is to re-tender, sometime with revision of initial specifications.
However in case of turning to single tender, sometimes a decision can be taken to place order if:

1. It is proven that in spite of repeated attempts on single bid is received/getting qualified.
2. The technology is proprietary in nature.
3. The requirement is extremely urgent and delay in procurement (re-tendering included) can be a threat.

This clearly is a case of Single bid scenario and logically they should go for a re-tender, but (as the article mentioned), the process is going on for 6-7 years and now this hardware not available could be posing operational challenges. So government is seeking legal grounds of allowing this deal to go through.
Usually Audit agencies like CAG donot prefer this type of scenario. even operational emergency (unless there is a war going on and you need something immediately), these cases are treated as lack of planning properly.



I won't be that critical, infact government is following SOP. If there is a lacuna, it is out inability to procure hardware in time bound manner through Open bidding. This is also one reason why most of our high end hardware is coming through Government to Government deals but then again these are essentially Single Party procurement.
I sincerely hope our new DPP takes care of this mess we have created for ourselves.

@MilSpec @PARIKRAMA Gentlemen you can throw more light on issue.