The Defence Acquisition Council, chaired by Defence minister Rajnath Singh, on Tuesday shortlisted state-owned Mazagaon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL) and Larsen & Toubro (L&T) for the ₹45,000 crore submarine project for the Indian navy.
Proposals from Adani Defence and Hindustan Shipyard Limited, also a state-owned unit, were rejected, a defence ministry official told Mint.
“The empowered committee had found that all the clearances were not in place (for the Adani bid) for the formulation of the joint venture that put in the bid for the submarine project. The Defence Acquisition Council which met today (Tuesday) endorsed this decision,” the official said.
MDL and L&T will now respectively team up with foreign partners – an original equipment manufacturer – to put in the final bid for the manufacture of six next-generation conventionally powered submarines.
There are five original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), out of which MDL and L&T will choose one each as their partner. These five companies are South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME), France’s Naval Group, Spain’s Navantia, Russia’s Rosoboronexport and TKMS from Germany.
The contract is being processed under the ‘strategic partnership model’ which combines an Indian manufacturer with a foreign company for technology know-how.
According to a second official, these submarines will have Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) technology to give them the ability to stay underwater for weeks.
According to a report in The Economic Times last week, a tussle had emerged over the biggest Make in India project for the defence sector after the Navy had refrained from going ahead with the joint public-private bid while the defence production officials had emphasized that such combinations should be considered.
Source: Livemint
