Defence minister to have say on extent of blacklisting

Proposed policy to blacklist firms in a graded manner

The Centre will soon release a new blacklisting policy wherein the defence minister will have the authority to decide the extent of blacklisting.

This is to avoid closure of the limited avenues of arms procurement. The new norms will be a mixture of heavy fines, graded blacklisting and other penalties.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar (pictured) said at an interactive session here, “The ministry has received opinion from the law ministry. National interest will be of paramount importance while blacklisting any company. If a company does something wrong, that company can be blacklisted for that area only. There will be different criteria for blacklisting depending on the errors for different areas.” He said “serious crimes” would not go unpunished. It is easy to blacklist a company, he said, but there are very few arm companies that can be tapped for defence procurement. There won’t be an indiscriminate blacklisting of companies and the punishment for corruption and wrongdoing by a defence manufacturer will be applied in a graded manner, he said. Currently, a company can be barred from entering into a contract with the government as soon as suspicion of wrongdoing emerges.