Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020

The Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020 (DAP 2020) is the principal policy instrument through which India's Ministry of Defence (MoD) procures capital assets—aircraft, warships, tanks, missiles, radars and associated systems—for the Army, Navy, Air Force and the Indian Coast Guard. Promulgated on 28 September 2020 by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, it superseded the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) 2016 and was the first iteration to be renamed "Acquisition" rather than "Procurement," signalling a broadened scope that includes leasing and post-contract management alongside outright purchase. Its legal authority derives not from a parliamentary statute but from the executive powers of the Union government over defence under Entry 1 of the Union List and the financial-propriety provisions of the General Financial Rules; it operates in conjunction with the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), chaired by the Defence Minister, which remains the apex decision-making body. DAP 2020 was explicitly drafted to operationalise the Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) policy announced in May 2020 and to raise the indigenous content threshold across categories.

Procedurally, an acquisition begins when a service headquarters articulates a capability gap and frames it as a Services Qualitative Requirement (SQR), consolidated into the Services Capital Acquisition Plan and the longer-horizon Integrated Capability Development Plan. The proposal is then placed before the DAC for Acceptance of Necessity (AoN), which fixes the categorisation—the procedural route the case will follow. A Request for Proposal (RFP) is issued to vetted vendors; technical evaluation by a Technical Evaluation Committee is followed by field trials, a Staff Evaluation, oversight by a Technical Oversight Committee, and commercial evaluation by a Contract Negotiation Committee to determine the lowest-cost compliant bidder (L1). The case proceeds to the competent financial authority—Defence Minister, Cabinet Committee on Security, or lower delegated tiers depending on value—for final sanction before contract conclusion.

DAP 2020 retains and refines a hierarchy of acquisition categories ranked by preference for indigenisation. These are Buy (Indian–Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured), Buy (Indian), Buy and Make (Indian), Buy and Make, and Buy (Global). The 2020 edition introduced a new category, Buy (Global–Manufacture in India), permitting foreign vendors to win contracts on condition that they establish a manufacturing presence in India, and it raised minimum indigenous content requirements—generally by ten percentage points—across most categories. Among its signature innovations is the formal incorporation of leasing as a distinct acquisition route, allowing the services to operate equipment without owning it, useful for assets needed transiently or for capabilities requiring high capital outlay. The document also overhauled offset policy, removing the offset obligation from single-vendor and government-to-government and inter-governmental agreement procurements following Comptroller and Auditor General criticism of offset efficacy.

Contemporary practice illustrates the framework in action. The DAC under Rajnath Singh has granted numerous AoNs under DAP 2020, including for indigenous fighter, helicopter and naval programmes routed to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and to private firms under the Buy (Indian–IDDM) category. The procurement of additional Tejas Light Combat Aircraft and the negotiation of project-specific deals with foreign original equipment manufacturers required to manufacture in India reflect the new categorisation logic. The leasing provision has been examined for naval and transport platforms. The MoD's annual "positive indigenisation lists," first issued in August 2020 by the Department of Military Affairs, complement DAP 2020 by banning imports of specified items beyond fixed timelines, channelling those requirements into domestic categories.

DAP 2020 must be distinguished from adjacent instruments. It governs only capital acquisition; revenue procurement—spares, consumables, services—falls under separate Defence Procurement Manual provisions. It is distinct from the Defence Production and Export Promotion Policy, which addresses the manufacturing base rather than the buying process, and from the offset guidelines that sit within it as a chapter rather than a freestanding regime. It should not be confused with the predecessor DPP 2016 from which it descends, nor with the foreign Military Sales–style government-to-government route, which DAP 2020 accommodates as an inter-governmental agreement but does not itself constitute. The DAC, a body, is also distinct from the procedure, the document, though the two are routinely conflated in commentary.

Controversies surrounding DAP 2020 centre on the gap between policy intent and delivery. Critics, including parliamentary standing committees and the CAG, have noted that acquisition timelines remain protracted despite procedural streamlining, that field-trial requirements deter foreign vendors, and that the higher indigenous-content thresholds can be difficult to verify and audit. The removal of offsets from intergovernmental deals drew debate over forgone technology transfer. The creation of the Department of Military Affairs and the post of Chief of Defence Staff in 2020 added the Integrated Capability Development Plan to the planning architecture, and subsequent amendments have adjusted thresholds and added emergency procurement windows used during operational contingencies along the northern borders.

For the working practitioner—a desk officer, defence attaché, think-tank analyst or industry liaison—DAP 2020 is the indispensable reference for understanding how an Indian requirement becomes a contract, which category a given competition falls under, and what indigenisation and offset obligations a foreign supplier must shoulder. Reading a procurement decision requires knowing the category cited in the AoN, since that single classification determines vendor eligibility, content thresholds and the permissibility of foreign participation. As India pursues both self-reliance and a substantial import programme, DAP 2020 is the document that mediates between strategic ambition and procurement reality, and its periodic revisions are closely tracked across the diplomatic and defence-industrial community.