The Ministry of Defence has formed a core group to iron out the wrinkles and put a clear policy framework for defence procurement procedures under the Make-in-India initiative.

The group will submit final solutions on bottleneck issues by June-end, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has said.

A part of the group’s brief is to help launch a website listing components and products that will be blocked for import and be sourced indigenously.

Parriker was speaking in Pune at the ‘Make-in-India for Defence’ seminar organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry on Saturday.

“Yesterday, I have formed a core group, which is expected to give its findings on various issues haunting the DPP and many other aspects of defence procurement, and are probably bottlenecks for the make-in-India in defence.”

The Ministry had already identified most of the issues for procurement and done 90 per cent of the work. “The committee will now scrutinise these, add some points, talk to industry and stakeholders for the final time and give us final solutions by June-end,” he said.

On the proposed website, Parriker said, “We will put up different types of categorised products from complete products to spare parts, defining the value and quantum required for the next five years.”

Anyone selected for manufacture, and who could successfully make the prototype, will be guaranteed five years’ minimum orders, after which the manufacturer will have to compete.

“It can be a gun or a small component like a rivet,” he said, observing that he was disturbed that HAL was importing rivets required for its planes.

Land Bill will help farmer’s development

Coming down heavily on the Congress’ opposition to the land acquisition bill, he said during 2005-2012 there were land acquisition scams, and huge quantities of land were acquired for SEZs. Only 30 per cent of this was used. The balance was with private parties and no longer belonged to farmers, he added.

“Now, they have suddenly developed nausea, and say that farmers are suffering and come up with an iron-clad land bill that not a single square metre of land can be acquired, even for the purpose of serving the poor,” Parriker quipped.

Land has to be acquired for building roads and canals and setting up transmission lines and industrial corridors. “Isn’t the farmer going to benefit from all these?” he queried.