In order to undo the recurrent issues of delays in its defence acquisitions, the Centre had last year constituted a nine-member committee to recommend the creation of a new independent organisation which would deal with all the aspects of defence acquisition, while being outside the defence ministry.
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This new committee, tentatively called Defence Capital Acquisition Authority, has said that it is ready with its report since last month. The report runs into 300 pages and is expected to be submitted to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar next week, reported the Financial Express.
The committee, constituted in May 2016, is headed by retired IIM professor Pritam Singh who has held talks with the defence secretary. The authority has loosely drawn features from similar organisations in France, Australia, UK and South Korea.
The new authority would bring the entire acquisition process under one umbrella and seeks to bring professionalism to the entire exercise.
"We have given this new organisation full ownership of the acquisition process by bringing legal, financial, costing and technical experts under one roof. Independent of the Ministry (of Defence), they will not be constrained by government rules. This professionalisation of the process will bring down the time taken to complete defence acquisitions. We have also recommended adequate internal checks and balances to reduce corruption," a member of the expert committee said, the report noted.
India has a dodgy track record when it comes to arms acquisition, with both government-to-government deals and open tender processes taking decades to get materialised. The worse among them is the open-tender process which gets invariably embroiled in allegations of corruption and their eventual blacklisting of such firms, thus banning them from selling their product to the Indian Armed Forces.
Another issue which the body would look into is the issue of the defence ministry's unspent money, which is again a victim of the long-drawn acquisition process.
This new committee made news with the then head of the committee former Director General (Acquisition) Vivek Rae resigning in October 2016, following differences with the other committee members over his belief that the authority should be under the ambit of the ministry. But the other members wanted it to be an independent authority so that it does not get entangled in the bureaucratic red tape.
Once the defence services have identified the operational requirements, the authority would swing into action, while taking full responsibility for the entire acquisition process. The authority would be managed by qualified professionals from the specific fields, including those outside the government.
The decision-making will be "collective and collegiate," the report noted.
"This organisation will convert all acquisition schemes and programmes into projects, which will be the responsibility of a project management team from the start to finish," according to the report.
Further, the report noted that it would be clubbing the requirement of different services under a single project.
It was also revealed that the authority would be combining the functions of service headquarters that looks after defining the technical features of weapon systems and undertaking trial evaluation, Director General Quality Assurance for quality assurance, the office of DG (Acquisition) for contract negotiation, Department of Defence Production for industrial development and Defence Reserach and Development Organisation for sponsoring research on futuristic technology. It will also be subsuming the capital acquisition wing of the defence ministry.
However, the committee has asked the government to tread carefully and does not want it to rush in creating the authority, as it would create disruptions in the current procurement. The committee has proposed two years to complete the exercise, while keeping the timeline open for additional deliberations, the Financial Express report noted.
