Indians For Guns

Hi! Does anyone know if the private sector is allowed to manufacture fire-arms in India? The purpose is sale to Indian security and armed forces and exports. A foreign company is interested in local JV, so can this be with private sector player or restricted to PSU? I plan to publish this in my Indian defence newspaper http://www.8ak.in. pls PM me

As of now, needlessly strict Government restrictions and regulations limit private sector's manufacturing capacity and capability to only air-guns, Shotguns (SBBL-DBBL- not even pump-actions) and muzzle loaders. This too is severely controlled by dim-witted babus in terms of maximum per annum output. Most manufacturers are limited to high hundreds only.

Late last year and earlier this year I heard rumors of the likely hood of a couple of big players in the Indian industry (I think Mahindra and L&T...If recall clearly) being considered for manufacturer of military firearms. I think it was to be some kind of license manufacture of Russian AK-100 series rifle. The arrangement to be allowed by the Government seems to have been too conditional and one sided (In favor of the Government) and the market too limited for anything useful to come out of it. It almost seemed the establishment wanted to ensure a still-born baby.

Not that there is too much transparency about it but I believe a lot of component manufacture of IOF firearms are tendered out (If one keeps track of tenders that keep appearing ever once in a while on major dailes ) - I don't know if that qualifies as Private sector participation...

There is a rumour circulating around that 2-3 weeks back L&T has signed a MoU with the Govt. regarding manufacturing of small arms for civilians and for export, true or false ?

best,
Rp.

L&T is one of the original four companies (IIRC the other 3 were Mahindra, Tata and Punj Lloyd, though not entirely sure on that last one)that were granted licenses to manufacture firearms by the (then) NDA run government. However, none of the four ever began production as the then arms manufacturing policy laid down terms which were inimical to any (sensible) business making large investments & starting production; these limitations included a ban on exports/ domestic civilian sales combined with no guarantee from the Govt. that even they would buy from them!

The new arms manufacturing policy on the other hand is somewhat more liberal (see MHA website for the complete policy document), so maybe L&T has finally decided to begin production using their existing license (to manufacture arms)... this is mere speculation on my part here!

Cheers!
Abhijeet

Here in old article (from 2006) that i found that says that L&T would be getting into manufacturing small arms and later ammo as well, but mostly for the government.

http://www.business-standard.com/india/ ... et/266775/