Malpractices in Defence acquisition won’t be tolerated - Antony

Wednesday, May 27, 2009
In the toughest ever message to stem corruption in Defence Procurement, the Defence Minister Shri AK Antony today said the Government ‘would not hesitate to ruthlessly cancel contracts’, if malpractices are found in any acquisition. Deviating from the prepared text at the inauguration of DEFCOM India – 2009, in New Delhi today, Shri Antony asked organisations such as CII, FICCI, etc to help the Government in this regard.

Shri Antony said the Government has consciously taken a decision to minimise the country’s dependence on import of defence systems and platforms. He also agreed that more products should be sourced on the basis of ‘buy and make’ rather than ‘buy’ category alone. He lamented that nearly 70% of Defence weapons and systems are still being imported and only 30% are being indigenously produced.

The Defence Minister said the turbulence in our immediate neighbourhood puts the political stability in our country in an even better perspective. He said the need to modernise our defence forces to preserve our territorial integrity in the face of asymmetric and unconventional means of warfare cannot be overemphasized. He called for a synergy of efforts of the Armed Forces, the Industry, the Academia and Research and Development Establishments to transform our Defence Forces to a network centric force.

Shri Antony said the transformation of Defence Forces is a continuous process, and the overall aim should be to bring about sustained competitive advantages in warfare.

Referring to the new challenges before the Armed Forces, both in terms of the concepts involved and the material needed, the Minister said it is neither possible nor feasible to have equipment and systems on stand-by for all conceivable variants of modern military conflicts. Shri Antony suggested developing of parallel capabilities and evolution of concept, process, organisations and technologies.

Shri Antony was of the opinion that development of military capabilities through complex systems will depend on a close collaboration between the end users – our Armed Forces and the industry. The Defence Minister said, the existing capability of the industry will have to be significantly enhanced. He said, Military capabilities will have to be shaped by a combination of knowledge and defence technologies, paving the way for new areas of activity offering substantial potential to innovate. Underlying the need for a strong cooperation between the Defence force and industry, Shri Antony expressed hope that the Seminar will address the issue of Informatics for Defence Force Transformation and Technology Development in Information age.

The two-day seminar on Informatics for Defence Force Transformation and Technology Development in the Information Age called ‘DEFCOM India – 2009’ has been organised by Corps of Signals of Indian Army in collaboration with Confederation of Indian Industry. The Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor was also present during the inaugural session. DEFCOM India aims at identifying specific goals and measures towards technology development in the information age in order to enable creation of info structure for defence force transformation. The Seminar is also expected to identity a feasible and realistic Road Map for Infrastructure transformation and provide the industry an insight into the expectations of Defence Forces regarding future communication requirements.
Sitanshu Kar/Samir/RAJ
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Comments: Government should ban all retired defence service personnel (receiving pension and other benefits) and their families from acting as touts, brokers or contractors for Arms Purchase engineered by MOD. The scams show ESM in very poor light as they should instead lead a honourable retired life givng back to the society rather than be involved in defence scams and kickbacks which is truly shameful.