The government may have decided to let Ottavio Quattrocchi off the hook, but the Bofors ghost continues to haunt the armed forces, with several key artillery modernisation programmes put in the limbo due to wrongdoing charges levelled against three major international manufacturers.

While no new artillery guns have been purchased since the Bofors scandal, the latest victim of ‘ban’ are two crucial contracts to procure 155 mm towed artillery guns and 155 mm light ‘mountain’ howitzers to maintain the Army’s conventional edge in the region.

Ironically, out of the major global artillery systems, only the Bofors gun, which has changed ownership several times and is now part of the BAE group, can be bought by the Army no questions asked.

The towed guns are urgently required to match Pakistan, which has recently acquired modern self-propelled ones from the US under the “fight against terror” aid while the light howitzers are required for deployment in the mountains, mainly along the Chinese border where they can be airdropped to inaccessible areas.

In the works for almost a decade, the two contracts have been delayed due to the ban on South African Denel, Israeli Soltam and Singapore Technologies, which are under the scanner for alleged bribery in several different cases.

Trials for the towed guns — the Army requires 400 of them at the earliest — were set to take place later this month but sources say they have now been put off due to the charges levelled against one of the competitors, Singapore Technologies, in connection with the Ordnance Factory Board scam. The only other gun that made it was the Bofors, but to prevent a single vendor situation, the trials have been put off. This has effectively pushed back the acquisition by at least a year.

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