As he came under attack from the opposition on the chinks in defence armoury, defence minister AK Antony came out with a weak defence that the situation is now being corrected.
As he came under attack from the opposition on the chinks in defence armoury, defence minister AK Antony came out with a weak defence that the situation is now being corrected.
“That was in the past. Now for the last four years, we have not been surrendering any money to the finance ministry. We have been spending all the funds allocated to us,” he said while responding to the debate on the grants for the defence ministry in the Rajya Sabha.
Antony, however, added that he shares the service chiefs assessment that the current allocation of Rs1,93,000 crore is inadequate and needs to be enhanced. “They want Rs47,000 crore more, I also agree that this should be increased,” he said.
But the defence minister sought to put the deficiencies pointed by the army chief VK Singh in his letter to the PM in perspective. “I have looked at the past records. There is nothing new in what he has written. Right from the time of independence, the army chiefs have been asking for more,” he said. “But then, irrespective of these shortcomings, the Indian Army is the best in the world,” he added.
On the major aspects of criticism by the opposition, Antony conceded that there have been gaps and there is still some time before these could be filled up. “Yes, the army needs a new gun,” he said while accepting that the last time a new gun was bought was in 1986 — the Bofors gun. He also admitted that the army needs a new gun for its air defence, but said the procurement of this new weaponry had to be aborted at the last stage because of corruption aspects that had surfaced.
He also shared the opposition’s concern about the changed geo-strategic realities and the “disturbed neighbourhood” and pointed out that for the 12th plan period, these aspects have been taken into consideration while framing the course of action.
Antony said a new defence production policy has been put in place and this would encourage the participation of the Indian private sector in joint ventures with the defence public sector undertakings and ordnance factories. “We want to reduce our dependence on foreign vendors,” he said.
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