The Defence Ministry today scrapped a scam-tainted tender worth over Rs 6,000 crore to procure 197 light helicopters from foreign vendors and decided to allow indigenous players to manufacture these choppers for the armed forces.
In a meeting of the Defence Acquisition Council headed by Defence Minister Arun Jaitley, the government cleared proposals worth over Rs 17,500 crore and gave a go-ahead for opening the commercial bids for Navy's tender for 16 multirole helicopter involving AgustaWestland.
The Ministry cleared the final hurdles for the Rs 15,000 crore deals for procuring 22 Apache attack choppers and 15 Chinook heavylift helicopters to be procured from the US, a few weeks ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to that country.
The DAC decided to retract from the tender for procuring 197 helicopters and it has been decided that the Indian industry would be given the opportunity to produce around 400 such choppers for the requirements of the armed forces, Defence Ministry sources said here.
In line with Prime Minister's call for promoting domestic manufacturing industry, the government's decision to buy the choppers under the 'buy and make' category is expected to generate business worth over Rs 40,000 crore for the local industry in the defence sector, they said.
Out of the 197 choppers, 133 were meant for the Army while the remaining were to be provided to the IAF for mainly supplying troops and equipment to high altitude locations such as the Siachen glacier.
This is the second time in seven years that the tender has been scrapped in which European Eurocopter and Russian Kamov were competing and it had been on hold for the past over two years due to an ongoing CBI probe and other allegations of wrongdoings in the trial process.
CBI probe was ordered into the deal in view of allegations in the AgustaWestland chopper scam that a Brigadier had asked for a bribe of Rs 30 crore from the Anglo-Italian firm for helping it in the light chopper deal.
AgustaWestland was eliminated in the first round of the deal and only Eurocopter and Kamov were left in the race.
