Aim is to make defence forces lean, cut down expenditure
In the ongoing effort to make the defence forces lean and mean besides cutting down expenditure, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has approved the abolition of 9,304 posts in the Military Engineering Services (MES), which is responsible for creating military infrastructure. The cutting down of posts is part of the recommendations made a panel in 2017 to improve the functioning of the armed forces and rebalance defence expenditure.
The pruning of numbers in the MES mostly pertains to the civilian staff. Officials said here on Thursday most of the posts abolished are in basic and industrial workforce. Moreover, the minister’s nod is for abolishing 9,304 posts out of a total 13,157 vacancies, they said.
Giving details, officials said Singh approved the proposal of Engineer-in-Chief of Military Engineering Services (MES) for optimisation of more than 9,300 posts in the basic and industrial workforce. It is in line with the recommendations of the Committee of Experts, headed by Lt General Shekatkar(retired), which had recommended measures to enhance combat capability and rebalance defence expenditure of the Armed Forces.
One of the recommendations made by the Committee was to restructure the civilian workforce in a manner that the work of the MES could be partly done by departmentally employed staff and other works could be outsourced. The recommendation was aimed at making the MES an effective organisation with a leaner workforce, well equipped to handle complex issues in the emerging scenario in an efficient and cost effective manner.
The 11-member Shekatkar committee was appointed by late Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar in 2016 with a broad mandate and had made about 99 recommendations from optimising defence budget to the need for a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). The panel had suggested that if the recommendations are implemented over the next five years, it can result in savings of up to Rs 25,000 crore in defence expenditure.
Realising the importance of having a lean and mean force to fight modern day warfare, the defence ministry approved the first batch of 65 recommendations pertaining to the Army were approved in 2017 by then Defence Minister Arun Jaitley.
Those reforms included redeployment and restructuring of approximately 57,000 posts of officers, Junior Commissioned Officers(JCO) and civilians.
The panel also stressed on optimisation of Signals establishments to include radio monitoring companies, corps air support signal regiments, air formation signal regiments, composite signal regiments, and merger of corps operating and engineering signal regiments.
It also called for restructuring of repair echelons in the Army to include base workshops, advance base workshops and static/station workshops in the field Army.
The panel also recommended closure of military farms and army postal establishments in peace locations. The last two have already been implemented.
Highlighting the urgent need for synergising the three Services namely the Army, IAF and Navy, the panel recommended the establishment of a Joint Services War College for training for middle-level officers, even as the three separate war colleges — Mhow, Secunderabad and Goa — could continue to train younger officers for their respective services. Similarly, the Military Intelligence School, Pune be converted to a tri-service intelligence training establishment was another proposal.