NEW DELHI: Leave alone new-generation assault rifles, light machine guns or close-quarter battle carbines, the humble infantry soldier is still nowhere getting something as basic as proper lightweight modular bullet-proof jackets a decade after the demand was first made.Defence ministry sources on Tuesday said the procurement for 1,86,138 bullet-proof jackets through the “capital procurement route”, which was approved by the defence acquisitions council in October 2009, is now on the verge of being scrapped.All these 1.86 lakh jackets, each costing around Rs 50,000, were to be inducted by 2012. Another 1.67 lakh jackets were to be ordered in the second round. “But the jackets offered by six vendors have not met the technical parameters or GSQRs (general staff qualitative requirements) laid down by the Army. DRDO laboratory DMSRDE (defence materials research & development establishment), too, has failed to deliver,” said a source.The only silver lining is that the “emergency revenue procurement” of 50,000 jackets, approved as an operational urgency by defence minister Manohar Parrikar last year, is finally showing some progress now.Two Indian firms, Tata Advanced Materials and MKU, have been selected and asked to submit “advance samples” for comprehensive ballistic tests. “If they pass, then bulk orders of 25,000 each would be placed on the two firms. These jackets should cost around Rs 25,000 apiece,” said the MoD source.But a fresh tender, with new GSQRs, will now have to be floated for the bigger project for 1.86 lakh modular jackets. These jackets were required to effectively protect the head, neck, chest, groin and sides of soldiers as well as allow them to move with greater agility during counter-insurgency operations.The Army wanted a modular jacket, whose weight could vary depending on the level of protection needed. The jacket was to weigh less than 4-kg for “low threat'' missions. For “high threat” missions, the jacket was to weigh up to 11.5 kg with hard armour plates.The project was cleared in 2009 since the Army then had a shortage of 1.86 lakh jackets in its authorized holding of 3,53,765 jackets. Since then, even the old and bulky jackets currently held by the Army, which offer inadequate protection, are now running out of their shelf-life.Revision of technical parameters and re-floating of tenders as well as convoluted defence procurement procedures and politico-bureaucratic apathy have put paid to several modernization plans of the Army.The scrapping of the jackets’ tender will be the second one for the Army in recent times. As earlier reported by TOI, the four-year-old tender for new-generation assault rifles, with interchangeable barrels for conventional warfare and counter-insurgency operations, was also junked this year.The mega project had envisaged the direct acquisition of 65,000 rifles from the selected foreign vendor for around Rs 4,850 crore. The Ordnance Factory Board was to then manufacture over 1,13,000 such rifles, after getting transfer of technology from the foreign company. But the rifles which underwent the tests also did not meet the GSQRs laid down in the tender.