India scraps plan to lease Sikorsky copters

In a major setback to the Indian Coast Guard's plan to upgrade its capacity post-Mumbai attacks, India's Defense Ministry has cancelled a tender for hiring eight helicopters -- including ones built by Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford -- for transport and evacuation operations after going through the year-long selection process, The Economic Times reports.

"Yes, we have cancelled the tenders for hiring of eight medium lift helicopters," a top Defense Ministry official told India's business newspaper in a post to its Web site.

The ministry had floated the tender for leasing the eight helicopters from global manufacturers in the middle of 2009, a deal that would have been worth millions of dollars.

Four major helicopter manufacturers -- French Eurocopter, British-Italian Agusta Westland, Russian Kaman and American Sikorsky -- were provided the tender documents.

But only Sikorsky and Agusta responded to the tender towards the end of 2009.

However, after about eight months of scrutinising the tender papers and opening of commercial bids, the Defense Ministry decided to cancel the tenders and go in for a re-tendering process, the official said.

While Sikorsky had offered its S-76C platform, Agusta offered its AW109G platform to meet the Coast Guard's needs, the official said.

India's Coast Guard planned to place two helicopters in four different coastal cities so that its personnel could respond to emergency situation in no time.