Adani, L&T among those in race for PSLV contract

The three entities placed their bids on July 30 after NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), a PSU operating under the Department of Space (DoS) issued an RFP (request for proposal) regarding the same.  The NSIL was initially launched as a commercial arm of ISRO and later mandated with productionising launch vehicles, owning satellites and much more.

Three entities—a consortium led by the Adani Group, another one led by L&T and a single company are competing to acquire a PSLV contract for building five PSLV launch vehicles. This will be the first time when entities outside ISRO will build a launch vehicle end-to-end. This contract is likely to be awarded by the end of 2021 and the selected entity will be a licensed producer.

 NSIL announced an expression of interest (EoI) for five PSLVs to which five entities had responded and the RFP for this was then issued in December 2020. “There were five players who responded to the EoI; three have submitted bids after the RFP just over three weeks,” a senior official told the Times of India publication.

The three entities – a consortium comprising Adani-Alpha Design, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML), another one including Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and L&T have bid as group entities whereas Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has bid for this contract as a single company. The contract is not only aimed at furthering the Centre’s Make-in-India but also at ramping up ISRO’s capabilities to launch more satellites in the coming years, as per a DoS communiqué.

“The techno-commercial evaluation is underway, after which the bids will be opened. We are hopeful of completing the whole process in a couple of months, and cannot comment on anything more at this juncture,” NSIL Managing Director and Chairman Radhakrishnan D said.