Tuesday 10 April 2012

Three Service Chiefs To Address Parliament

Monday, April 09, 2012
 
The parliamentary standing committee on defence on Monday decided to call all the three service chiefs to give an account of the state of preparedness of the forces against the backdrop of Army chief Gen V. K. Singh speaking of shortages and deficiencies.
The standing committee took the decision to call the chiefs of Army, Navy and Air Force on April 20 to understand the issue of defence preparedness as the panel was examining the budgetary proposals of the defence ministry for 2012-13.

The date for appearing in the parliament could be adjusted to make sure that all the three Chiefs are available on the same day.

The standing committee was informed that the process of modernisation and procurements has been expedited and that the modernisation of the armed forces is going on in full swing. The Army is facing problems with the Ordnance Factory Board in terms of timely delivery of weapons and ammunition and the Air Force had issues with Hindustan Aeronautical Ltd on trainer aircraft and maintenance of it's fleet. The Army Vice Chief also told the standing committee that the force was facing a shortage of certain anti-tank munitions and this claim was backed-up by the Army chief.
Due to these irritants, the committee decided to call the chiefs of all the three forces for a face-to-face interaction.

The interaction with the three chiefs can help the standing committee to prepare a separate report on India's defence preparedness which can then be submitted to the central government with recommendations.

All three chiefs addressing the parliament together is an extraordinary step because the three service chiefs have appeared before the parliament only once since independence.

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