New Delhi: After dithering for nearly three years on the fate of a Rs. 20,000 crore ($2.65 billion) programme for building four amphibious warships for the navy, India has retracted the tender issued in 2013, deciding to rewrite the project requirements to meet the modern threat perceptions and technological advancements.

As reported by Defence.Capital on this very likely decision in July this year, the Narendra Modi government has preferred to go in for a fresh tender in the capital acquisition programme instead of awarding the contract to the lone bidder left in the fray, after the only other bidder got into an insolvency proceeding over bad debts.

“The 2013 tender for building four Landing Pontoon Docks (LPDs) has been retracted in late September this year. This has been done primarily to update the project’s staff qualitative requirements that are outdated now, as already a decade has lapsed since the last one was written for the 2013 tender,” a top government source told Defence.Capital.

India majors Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and Reliance Naval and Engineering Limited (RNEL) were the only two Indian shipyards that were left in the fray after the bids were opened for the tender.

But RNEL had gone to the Ahmedabad bench of the National Company Law Tribunal which admitted the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani-owned company’s insolvency plea in January this year.

After waiting for nine months to see if RNEL could be revived through new investors, the Ministry of Defence finally agreed with the Indian Navy‘s recommendation to retract the tender for the LPDs and to issue a new one after finalising fresh qualitative requirements.

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