Indian Army gives troops rotten food, gets rap from Comptroller and Auditor General

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has slammed the army for supplying poor quality food to personnel in the Northern Command.

In its report, ‘Supply Chain Management of Rations in Indian Army between 2005 and 2008’, presented to parliament on Tuesday,

CAG said in nearly 100% samples of food items it tested, the storage life of products had expired.

Mostly, army personnel were given to eat dry ration items that had passed their use-by date six to 28 months back.

The report also pulled up the army for absence of competition in the tendering process for fresh rations and irregularities in rates.
The audit was carried out in the army’s Udhampur-based Northern Command, Chandimandir-based Western Command and Kolkata-based Eastern Command.

The army stocks food for winter in the Northern Command, since the area is cut off for almost six months. Food and other rations are not fresh, but they are issued in accordance with estimated storage life (ESL), a period during which a food item is likely to remain fit for human consumption. In special cases, ESL maybe extended to 3 months.

CAG found that the shelf-life of pulses, flour, rice, tea, sugar, edible oil and raisins had been given a three-month extension by the central food laboratories (CFL) in Mumbai and Delhi.

However, the Jammu-based CFL extended it by another 6 to 28 months. In fresh rations, serious absence of competition came to light. Around 82% of procurements were based on less than 3 quotations and 36% on single-vendor quotations.