India is in high level of Defence preparedness and the armed forces are ready to face any eventuality, Defence Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday assured the lok Sabha as he allayed the apprehensions that there was any shortage of arms and ammunition in the country.
In response to a question on reports of troop movements in Tibet by China amid the on-going Doklam standoff and a senior Army officer’s statement that Pakistan’s Defence industry was better than India’s, Jaitely said the armed forces have adequate defence equipment to tackle any exigency.”Our Defence forces are ready to take on any eventuality,” he said without making any specific reference to Doklam standoff at Bhutan, India and China border tri-junction .
Asked about the CAG report which stated that the defence forces have ammunition that can last for 22 days in an event of a war, instead of the mandatory 40 days, the Defence Minister contended that significant progress has been made on this front thereafter, but did not elaborate. “Nobody should have a doubt on that,” Jaitley said. He said private sector has been roped in to have adequate indigenous production of arms and ammunition,” Jaitely said.
The Defence Minister said all the PSU ordinance depot in the country to continue to produce ammunition and there would be no staff retrenchment in the depots.
“The core expertise of these ODFs (ordnance factories) is (manufacturing) ammunition and they will continue to do that,” Jaitely said
In response to another question on the Government’s target to achieve indigenization by 2022, Subhash Bhamre, minister of state in the Defence Ministry, said taking into consideration the next 15 years, the forces have a long Term Integrated (lTI) perspective on this.
On another question related to “ disappearance” of a Sukoi fighter aircraft and “bodies of two pilots”, Jaitlely said Indian Airforce had conducted an investigation and “ no one should have doubt on the IAF report”. The MP from Kerala had said that two empty coffins were brought since the disappearance of the aircraft.