The Hindu's revelation that possible corruption in the procurement of Rs. 500-crore worth of equipment had compromised its ability to use satellite images of enemy troop movements and assets." title="Defence Minister A.K. Antony has ordered the Army to begin an internal investigation based on The Hindu's revelation that possible corruption in the procurement of Rs. 500-crore worth of equipment had compromised its ability to use satellite images of enemy troop movements and assets."/>
Army Headquarters orders investigation into leakage of documents to The Hindu
Defence Minister A.K. Antony has ordered the Army to begin an internal investigation based on The Hindu's revelation that possible corruption in the procurement of Rs. 500-crore worth of equipment had compromised its ability to use satellite images of enemy troop movements and assets.
Sitanshu Kar, Additional Director-General in-charge of media relations at the Ministry of Defence, told journalists on Thursday that Mr. Antony ordered the inquiry first thing in the morning, after meeting with officials.
Mr. Kar said he could not comment on who would carry out the investigation, and by when its findings were expected to be made.
The Hindu had reported on Thursday that the Army's image-analysis capabilities, which allow it to cull information of military relevance from satellite images, were hit by a controversial 2008 contract.
The contract relieved the supplier, Rolta, of its responsibility of providing periodic upgrades of the software — though the Army continued to pay crores of rupees to the company.
Documents obtained by The Hindu also established that the military officials involved in giving the contract to Rolta went on to work with the firm — raising fears of conflict of interest.
Highly placed military sources said the Army Headquarters had ordered a simultaneous investigation of how documents related to the contract were leaked to The Hindu.
Defence experts said The Hindu's expose pointed to serious problems in defence acquisition practices, which successive governments were reluctant to tackle head on.
Poorly conceived procedures
Commodore C. Uday Bhaskar, Director of the National Maritime Foundation and a former director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, said the problem lay in poorly conceived bureaucratic procedures put in place after the Bofors scandal, which was exposed by The Hindu in 1987-1988.
“If the armed forces buy a lemon,” he explained, “it is obviously either because of incompetence or corruption. Now, though the post-Bofors system is ostensibly designed to prevent malpractices, in fact privileges incompetence and thus opens the floodgates to corruption.”
“What we really need is to create a cadre of young officers who are competent to make the kinds of highly technical judgments military acquisitions need today, not committees of bureaucrats with no specialist judgment,” he said. “Task force after task force have made thoughtful, well-considered recommendations to reform the defence acquisition system.”
‘Fast-track probe'
Brigadier (retd.) Gurmeet Kanwal, who heads the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, called for expeditious investigations into the allegations, saying delays had hurt the armed forces' ability to acquire necessary equipment. Firms found guilty of misconduct could be subjected to financial penalties, he said.
Comments:
Antony is seen as a good and clean politician. He has to cleanup and change the defence ministry's equipment ordering system. There should be public notification - atleast in defence ministry website, whenever any purchase about 1 crore takes place.
India should develop own satellite software. There are many consultants in this case off-shore in reverse who could help. To depend on foreign sources with India's brainpower is inconceivable to me. It is simply a matter of funding such a project and getting the proper people and strategies to obtain foreign consultants and national development team. The effort needs to be managed and not simply turned over to a local Indian firm. Many US companies have update license/royalty provisions in contracts. They do this for added revenues. The fact Rolta provided modified software as client specification means the original software provided by the US company would not necessarily be compatible with the modified version unless the US company took into consideration the areas modified and updated software with those updates as part of new versions. This is highly unlikely because there would be too many versions. It sounds like ignorance on the part of US supplier to Rolta and now it becomes Rolta's full responsibility. I was involved in such ventures and speak from experience. Could this be the same Rolta I did business with in the 1980's?
A.K. Anthony has clean image and he is not going to allow corruption on his watch.
Well done 'The Hindu' in national interest. The problem in India is our budget is increasing day by day due to software exports, industry growth etc. but we do not have any innovative ideas as to how best to spend it properly for development so that we get good returns and thus, eliminating poverty. Super efficient managers must be inducted into the system to improve fiscal spending, banking and other operations and inefficient & corrupt must be punished.
The people should thank the Hindu for exposing an alleged scam in the acquisition of electronic warfare equipments for the Army and also the Defence Minister for his quick reaction in ordering an enquiry into that deal after seeing the report in the Hindu. If the enquiry substantiates what the Hindu has reported, then it will cast a very serious doubt in the minds of the people about our full prepardness as quite often declaimed by our Generals, in the event of a war thrusted upon us. What the Internal Audit System in the Defence Ministry is doing? How this particular irregularity escaped it's notice? Or was it intentionally suppressed from reaching the higher authorities? If the Defence Minister were to depend upon other agencies like Newsmedia to know what is happening in his ministry especially in respect of acquisition of hardwares for the Army, then nothing would prevent the Nation from concluding that some dangerous elements are lurking in the Ministry to compromise our security.
As far as I know, Mr Antony is one of the uncorrupted and a man of honor. Whatever he does will come to good.
Indian armed forces has corrupt officers at every level. Instead of patriotism and loyalty, the officers have selfish attitude and indulge in indiscipline and corrupt practices. The juniors officers elope with the wives of senior officers. Because of these, the lower ranks were denied their privileges like annual/casual leave, concessional travel, etc.
Mr. Antony has not enough courage to prevent incompetence and corruption. He may resign from his office as he did in the case of Sugar scam.
Mr. Antony has not enough courage to prevent incompetence and corruption. He may resign from his office as he did in the case of Sugar scam.
You did it again!! Congratulations! Brought attention to something that COULD be terribly wrong. There are two dailies that I won't miss reading: The Hindu and The Guardian. Both share the same values in journalism. Please inform all your readers (and everybody else) with continuous follow-up. I wonder where and how it will go.
This probe should be done before and not after the equipment were purchased. Our defense has to put up with an inferior product? What will you do if the outcome of the probe is that if somebody made big money? By the time you finish the enquiry he or she would have retired or lose the next election and after that everything goes under the carpet. As a minister what have you been doing all this time? What the defense administration and IAS officers are doing? This type of probe should be finished in a month and the culprit including the decision makers should be hanged in public for compromising the country’s security.
Hindu seems to specialize in unearthing possible corruption in the Army purchases.They did this in Bofors which was less number of in crores many years ago.Even this 500 crores is small compared 2G case.We hope this case would not go down in history as another unproved one.Of course we would know the result after 30 or 40 yrs.
Mr. Kumar,: I like the idea conducting the probe before a crime is committed. Only issue is how do you that without crystal ball, have any ideas? This sort of thinking is what happens when you criticize everything and everyone. In reality, what needs to be done is severe penalties for corruption starting with mandatory sentence of 10 years in jail forfeiture of ill gotten money with interest even if it is in relatives name.