20000214

Indian defence purchases

estimated at 400,000 m since 1985

NEW DELHI: Indian Ministry of Defence and three armed services are estimated to have made store purchases of military hardware between Rs 300,000 million to Rs 400,000 million in the past 15 years besides using Kargil excuse to bypass norms in arms deal.

In a six-week period after the Kargil conflict, the Ministry of Defence, prodded by the army, signed contracts for the import of varied ordnance worth nearly Rs 4000 millions, mainly from Russia and South Africa contravening the very procedures into which Defence Minister George Fernandes has recently ordered an inquiry, according to 'The Asia Age.'

Official sources said between early July and mid-August last, the Ministry of Defence hurriedly signed contracts with single vendors, flouting official guidelines that require more than one potential supplier for all military contraction order to broaden the choice and ensure competitive prices.

The single-vendor option, exercised arbitrarily by the MoD under pressure from a desperate army on the ground that it militarily imperative to swiftly import ordnance, become murkier as almost all the ammunition contracted for from Russia, South Africa, Israel, Spain, Bulgaria and Romania will only be delivered a year after signing the deal and long after the Kargil conflict.

On a single day in early August 1999, the Ministry of Defence-never credited with a sense of urgency in the matters pertaining to the national security-surprisingly signed contracts with Russia worth nearly Rs 800 millions.

A month earlier, the MoD had signed deals for Rs 600 million with South Africa for around 9000 155mm red phosphorous shells, varied ammunition for the newly acquired anti material rifle from Denel of South Africa which is capable of firing different calibre rounds besides high explosive grenades.

Other ordnance contracted for during this period, included 125mm rounds of armour piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot rounds for T-72 tanks from Israel, 40 mm anti-bunker grenade launchers in addition to over 90,000 grenades and some two million 7.62 mm rounds for AK-47s from Bulgaria.

However, the official sources said the near import of some two lakh 155 mm rounds from South Africa for $1200-1500 per shall, at the insistence of a strong lobby of senior army officers in South Block, during the Kargil conflict was, perhaps the most dubious of ploys by the military to "facilitate" overseas ammunition imports.

Much to the army chagrin, the Ordnance Factory Board opposed spending large sums on modifying the 155 mm plant to suit South African needs, arguing that it was cost effective to tap Swedish technology to build the shells.

Officers said the tussle between the army's South African lobby and the Ordnance Factory Board continues and it remains to be seen which the two ultimately prevails, the paper concluded.ÑAPP