MOD Questions Infantry’s Procurement Projects

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The increasing number of fast-track purchases for the Indian Army has triggered off suspicions of foul-play since competitive bidding and tenders are being scrapped, and a possibility has arisen that decisions were being manipulated. The Indian government is now trying to investigate the matter.

The matter of biased decision making by certain factions in the Indian Army in these fast track acquisition may turn murky, since the Director-General (infantry) Lieutenant General Jasbir Singh was discharged from his post in New Delhi last week. Incidentally, Lieutenant General Jasbir Singh was supervising the fast track acquisitions of the Indian Army, besides other acquisitions for the Indian Army’s Infantry units.

Sources disclosed that a decision to investigate these matters has not yet been finalised, but the Indian Army leadership and Ministry of Defence may have to re-assess the tenders as well as the recent acquisitions made by the Infantry Directorate. It has been noted most of these requests for fast track purchases were being pushed consistently by the Infantry Directorate to the Indian Ministry of defence. Some of the fast track foreign acquisitions have actually jeopardised the indigenous work on arms and equipment. On the one hand, research, development and trials were being carried out on indigenous equipment and in the end; quick decisions to acquire foreign equipment were being made.

It has been established that those fast-track purchases were sanctioned after the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008 and these were mostly meant to equip the “Ghatak” units of the Army, which comprises about 20 soldiers trained as commandos for conducting ambushes and carrying out attacks on enemy territory. The question remains whether these hastily acquired off-the-shelf arms and equipment were being made by unfair decision-making of the Infantry directorate.

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