Defence Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said the armed forces are “reasonably and sufficiently equipped” to defend the country. His assurance to the Rajya Sabha came after the Opposition raised concern over the shortage of ammunition and war wastage reserve in the Army as pointed out by the Comptroller and Auditor General(CAG) report tabled in Parliament last week.
Raising the issue during Zero Hour, Ramgopal Yadav(Samajwadi Party) said the report noted that the Army just had ammunition and critical spares to fight an intense war for ten days in the backdrop of tension on the borders both Pakistan and China. He urged the Government to take urgent steps to address the shortage.
Echoing similar sentiments, Congress member Ripun Bora said the CAG report pointed out that proposals moved in the period 2009-2013 by the defence forces for procuring weapons were still pending. A Rs 16,500 crore plan prepared by the Defence Ministry too for addressing the shortage issue has not yet been implemented, he said.
The CAG report had noted that the Army faces a shortfall of 40 per cent types of ammunition were in critical level having stocks of less than ten days. Moreover, out of a total 152 types of ammunition, the stock of 121 types of ammunition(80per cent) was below the authorisation level of 40 days of fighting war. Also, the availability of 55 per cent types of ammunition was below minimum inescapable requirement(MARI) to be maintained for operational preparedness, the report said.
Bora also said the CAG flagged the issue of accidents in the Navy adding the safety organization of the Navy set up in 2014 was yet to get the government approval. Thirty-eight accidents involving submarines and warships took place in the period 2007-2016. The report also said the Navy earlier had no safety organisation to address this issue and only set up such a unit in 2014. However, the Government nod was yet to be given to it.
Jaitley said the CAG report referred to the shortage of ammunition in relation to a point of time with 2013 as the reference year. “Subsequently thereafter, significant progress has been made,” he said. “Procedures (for procurement of arms and ammunition) have been simplified, powers decentralised and the armed forces are reasonably and sufficiently equipped,” the Minister said.
However, the Opposition was not satisfied with the reply and Congress member Anand Sharma asked when were the procedures simplified. He claimed the NDA Government had done little for defence preparedness in the last three years and the Army Vice Chief was given full powers only some days back to procure critical ammunition and spares. Sharma also said there was no full-time Defence Minister in the country and the earlier one, Manohar Parrikar, was a “non-performer.”Deputy Chairman P J Kurien said if the Opposition wants a discussion, they can give a separate notice.
Naresh Agrawal(Samajwadi Party) urged the government to take steps to maintain secrecy about the operational details of the security forces now dealing with situation in Jammu and Kashmir and China. He said television channels and media was reporting details thereby hampering the secrecy. Kurien associated himself with this and said the matter is serious and the government should look into it.
Derek O’Brien(Trinamool Congress) asked the government to spell out its stand on reported move to remove Rabindranath Tagore from the school textbooks. Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar said there was no such proposal and it respected all the national heroes. However, efforts were on to correct factual errors in the textbooks, he added and the ministry had received 700 such suggestions.