Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020 – Key Takeaways

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has released the long-awaited Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020¹ (DAP 2020), which came into effect on October 1, 2020 to succeed the earlier version Defence Procurement Procedure 2016. The DAP 2020 governs the acquisition of capital defence equipment and has been introduced to further enhance the indigenous manufacturing of defence equipment.  It also introduces several new ideas to balance the national priorities (such as timely procurements) and the challenges (such as budget allocation) that go along. Some of these aspects introduced in DAP 2020 are analyzed here below:

I. Applicability of DAP 2020 to ongoing cases

DAP 2020 will be applicable to all the acquisition programs where RFP has not yet been issued (pre-Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) stage, AoN stage and Make and D&D cases). For cases where AoN has been accorded under earlier DPPs, the same will be aligned for RFP to be issued under DAP 2020. Only where the RFP has