NEW DELHI: Manohar Parrikar led defence ministry has finally unveiled the much awaited 'guidelines for penalties in business dealings with entities' which appears to be more liberal than norms followed by previous UPA government.
Though the ministry claims to have simplify rules for blacklisting but the ministry is silent on the future of four foreign companies that were debarred for doing business in India for ten years by the then defence minister AK Antony.
The blacklisted companies include the Singapore Technologies, Israeli Military Industry, Germany's Rheinmetall Air Defence and Corporation Defence of Russia for their alleged involvement in a multi-crore ordinance factory scam.
These companies have already moved court against the government decision.
Sources maintained that the at a later stage the ministry might take up blacklisted firm issue on case to case basis.
New guidelines were released after a year long deliberations by the ministry after taking stock from all sections involved in decision making.
According to new rules, India can do business with banned companies if there is no available alternative in the market. Like due to ban on key Israeli defence firms, production line at newly set up Nalanda ordinance factory could not take off.
But now, this will be allowed after due approval from highest authority in the Service, not below the rank of Vice chief of concerned service.
Parrikar has been maintaining the stand that national security should not be compromised due to this blanket ban of erring defence firms.
New police also states that banning of business dealings, in turn, may be ordered only if a company accepts its misconduct, the CBI files a chargesheet against it or a court or tribunal finds it guilty.
But the fresh guidelines also makes it clear that the ban period will not be less than five years in case of violations of integrity pact.
And the company against which ban was imposed, will be allowed to take part in new tenders for spares, upgrades and maintenance for weapon systems supplied earlier.
It is notable that multiple ongoing projects of Navy and IAF were hit due to blanket ban on business dealings with the company involved in malpractices.