The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India suggested the union defence ministry revisit the entire process of acquiring for the Indian Air Force, including the 36 Rafale jets, in order to simplify the process as the auditor said the acquisition wing was unable to weed out the redundant activities.

Share Market Live

NSE

"The acquisition wing, headed by the DG (Acquisition) was envisaged as an integrated defence organisation. In reality, this has perhaps not happened, with the bulk of the acquisition-related activities still carried out in Services Headquarters," the CAG statement said.

The report said IAF did not define the Air Staff Qualitative Requirements (ASQRs) properly, due to which none of the vendors could fully meet the ASQRs. It added that ASQRs were changed repeatedly during the procurement process, which created difficulties during technical and price evaluation and affected the integrity of competitive tendering. This led to the delays in the acquisition process, the report added.

According to the report, the vendor response to the solicitation of offers was low, which restricted competition. The number of vendors who responded to the Request For Proposal (RFP) was far less than the number of vendors who were invited to bid, it noted.

Parliament LIVE: Modi government's Rafale deal 2.86% cheaper than UPA's, says CAG report tabled in Rajya Sabha

The auditor watchdog said that instead of the ‘Lowest Price Technically Acceptable (LPTA)’ method for bidding which had been used for this deal, the 'Best Value Method' should have been used as Rafale is a highly technical product.

The report said that there have been several delays at various stages of the acquisition process.

"Against three years envisaged in Defence Procurement Process, four cases took more than three years and seven cases took more than five years to reach the contract conclusion stage. Delays in the acquisition were essentially due to a complex and multi-level approval process, where objections could be raised at any stage," the statement said.

The capital acquisition system, the report said, is unlikely to effectively support the IAF in its operational preparedness and modernisation.

In December, the Supreme Court gave a clean chit to the NDA government dismissing all petitions calling for an investigation into the purchase of Rafale warplanes.

The Rafale deal is a defence agreement signed between the government of India and France for Rafale fighter, a twin-engine Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) manufactured by French aerospace company Dassault Aviation.