Ex-soldier and BJP leader Jaswant SIngh says Army chief may have decided to speak up after his boss’s prolonged inaction.
The old soldier and former defence minister Jaswant Singh on Monday pointed the finger at defence minister AK Antony for the embarrassing situation that hurts the army’s image.
Refraining from supporting the General’s disclosure to the media of corruption in purchases, the BJP leader said it is necessary to know whether the army chief felt he had to speak out because the minister did not respond.
“I have known Mr Antony for a long time. I do not know Gen VK Singh,” the BJP MP from Darjeeling said in response to a query.
And he characterized Antony’s style of functioning as the art of indecision. He said that a defence minister cannot indulge in procrastination and that it would affect national security.
Jaswant also left no one in doubt that he did not like the General going to the media. He made it clear that the action of the General and the inaction of the minister have impacted the morale of the armed forces.
The BJP leader recalled that when he took over the defence ministry — he did not mention that it was because of the sting operation on defence deals — he appointed a committee headed by Arun Singh, who was minister of state for defence in the Rajiv Gandhi cabinet, and an assessment was made of the needs of the armed forces in terms of modernization and acquisition of weapons and equipment. The BJP leader said the decision to acquire aircraft — there was need for 226 and it was brought down to 124 — has not yet been implemented.
He also said he had made a provision for setting up a registry of all middle-men in the arms purchases sector so that the agents working for arms manufacturers would all be brought out into the open. He said the government of the day had also written to the manufacturers asking them to give the names of their agents in India and the commission they were being paid for the arms transactions.
He was also not sure whether a CBI inquiry, which Antony has ordered in the wake of the General’s accusation, is the right thing to do because, he felt, institutions like the armed forces should have their own means of correcting the distortion in the system.
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