Sitharaman's daily meetings with service chiefs give momentum to stalled defence projects
Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman's strategy of meeting the three service chiefs every day has helped her ministry and the armed forces to take decisions to push stalled projects and proposals.
Defence Minister
Nirmala Sitharaman's daily meetings with the three service chiefs and defence secretary have started yielding results as they have started taking decisions to push the stalled projects and proposals of the armed forces.
Recently, in one of the meetings, the army raised the issue of its tender for procuring around 4,450 Light Machine Guns getting retracted as it was found to be a single vendor case, where Israeli firm IWI was the only company found fit during the trials.
Defence ministry procurement procedures discourage acquisition in cases where only one firm is in the fray for offering product.
After the tender was scrapped, the army put across in the meeting that the lack of these machine guns was hampering its operational preparedness, sources told Mail Today.
To offer a solution to the force, the DRDO has offered to provide LMG developed by it on its own for the army, which has apprehensions that its procurement may get delayed.
However, the defence minister and the army asked the DRDO to provide the indigenously developed LMG within 30 days for extensive trials before it could be inducted officially.
The mega "buy and make" procurement plan involved an initial direct purchase of around 4,400 LMGs from a foreign armament company, followed by a tie-up with the Ordnance Factory Board with transfer of technology for large-scale indigenous production. The entire project would have cost an estimated Rs 13,000 crore.
The project had come under the scanner during former defence minister
Manohar Parrikar's tenure who was assessing as to how could the acquisition process became a single vendor case after a large number of companies initially showed interest.
"If we keep moving at this pace and quick decisions can be taken by the services and the bureaucracy, this would definitely help in speeding up the processes and resolve long pending issues," a senior military officer told Mail Today.
The initiative to hold a meeting everyday was taken by Sitharaman soon after she took over and the services are either represented by their chiefs and in case they are not there, their Vice Chiefs attend the meeting.
There were apprehensions earlier that how could the daily meetings with the services would help in speeding up the work, but the services headquarters are quite positive about it now.
Every day, the three service chiefs meet the defence minister in her office where they take up one issue faced by the respective services and the then discussion is followed up with the administration finding solutions or the reason for slowing down of the proposals.
The minister has also decided to hold meetings of the Defence Acquisiton Council, the highest decision making body on defence procurement, every fortnight.
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/...iefs-momentum-stalled-projects/1/1051731.html
The indigenously developed ARDE light machine gun has a got a second wind with the import tender getting scrapped.
