Amid Doklam row, MoD seeks additional Rs 20k crore for combat readiness of armed forces

TNN August 9, 2017

The defence ministry on Tuesday sought “urgent” additional allocation of Rs 20,000 crore for military modernisation as well as day-to-day operating costs from the Centre, in a move that comes when Indian and Chinese troops continue to remain locked in a tense standoff near the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet trijunction since mid-June.

Sources said MoD officials led by defence secretary Sanjay Mitra told their finance ministry counterparts in a meeting that the Rs 20,000 crore was urgently required in addition to the Rs 2.74 lakh crore allocated for defence in the 2017-2018 budget.

“MoD officials said almost 50% of the capital and 41% of the revenue outlays in the defence budget had already been utilised in the ongoing fiscal. Moreover, the new customs duty on arms imports had also burnt a big hole in the defence budget. The finance ministry said the MoD request will be examined at the earliest,” a source said.

As it is, the Rs 1,72,774 crore revenue outlay for dayto-day costs and salaries by far outstrips the capital one of Rs 86,488 crore for new weapon systems and modernisation in the 2017-18 defence budget. Moreover, the bulk of the capital outlay is earmarked for “committed liabilities or instalments“ for deals inked earlier. Incidentally , the Rs 2.74 lakh crore outlay works out to just 1.56% of the projected GDP , the lowest such figure since the 1962 war with China.

As first reported by TOI last month, the armed forces have projected a require ment of Rs 26.84 lakh crore ($416 billion) over the next five years under the 13th Defence Plan (2017-2022) to ensure military modernisation and maintenance to take on the collusive threat from Pakistan and China as well as to safeguard India’s expanding geostrategic interests.

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The armed forces, in fact, want the annual defence budget to progressively reach at least 2% of the GDP for their operational requirements.The actual defence budgets, however, have shown a marked trend towards declining modernisation budgets, unspent funds and a skewed revenue to capital expenditure ratio, which have meant the Army , Navy and IAF continue to grapple with critical operational gaps on several fronts.

If the Army has operational deficiencies in artillery guns, infantry weapons, light helicopters, nightfighting capabilities and the like, the IAF does not have enough fighters, midair refuellers, AWACS (airborne warning and control systems) and drones. The Navy is struggling with shortages in the number of submarines, multi-role hel icopters and minesweepers.

Given the “operational military hollowness”, the defence ministry after the Uri terror attack in September last year had delegated emergency financial powers to the three Services to procure ammunition and spares to ensure they had enough reserves for “10 days of intense fighting”.

This had led to contracts worth Rs 23,700 crore being inked with countries like Russia, Israel and France so that the armed forces could maintain adequate stockpiles and combat readiness for “short and intense wars”.

The Army , which did not even hold one-third of its authorised war wastage reserves (WWR) for 40 days of intense fighting, had identified 46 different types of ammunition, 22 armaments, half a dozen mines as well as spares for 10 weapon systems ranging from tanks to artillery guns as “critical requirements“. This together would amount to roughly Rs 35,000-40,000 crore, as was reported earlier by TOI.

Since then, the Army has inked 19 contracts worth Rs 12,000 crore, which includes 11 kinds of ammunition.