Is it always a crime and a sign of corruption if a bid or request for proposal (RFP) for a defence order is modified after it has been issued, even if it is done with good intent?
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar here on Thursday said he had been seriously mulling this issue in recent days and trying “to convince everyone in Defence that even by making such changes, the procurement procedure can still remain transparent [or clean].”
Heavy-duty defence purchases are complex and have been fraught with issues of transparency. He remarked that bona fide changes to a bid document were looked at with suspicion. The RFPs are withdrawn because of challenges in drafting it for fear of creating a controversy. There are also cases of a single vendor being unfairly favoured.
“I think this concept of suspecting everyone needs to [change]. If it is there, I will remove it. Such a mindset has probably damaged the Indian strategic industry very much. We are trying to change it,” Mr. Parrikar said at the Strategic Electronics Summit.
The Minister said the defence sector itself was seeing many changes in the past two-odd years, including a “game-changing” updated Defence Procurement Policy 2016, which defines how military hardware was purchased for the forces.
He highlighted the importance of Indian supplier in raising indigenous content in defence manufacturing, where vendors are chosen through bids or the preliminary RFP.
“Today defence procedures do not allow any changes once an RFP is issued. If you tweak something even if it is based on feedback from a pre-bid meeting, you are seen to have taken a bribe from someone. There is an assumption that doing something correct will compromise the transparency of the procedure. I don’t understand this psychology at all.”
The government was also carefully and pragmatically viewing an old policy of banning and penalising certain vendors. This was to ensure that projects do not get stalled for many years.
