NEW DELHI: Giving further push to the Make-in-India initiative and to bring in private players to the defence sector, the government has equipped the commerce ministry with the power to grant licences to companies to manufacture defence equipment.
With this, private-sector players can apply to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) under the commerce ministry to get licences for manufacturing defence items.
Earlier, the home ministry used to issue such licences.
Under the new arrangement, though, the home ministry will have ‘supervision and control’ in the granting of licences, says a gazette notification. The defence items under the new arrangement include tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, military vehicles fitted with mountings for arms or equipment for mine lying, all tracked and wheeled self propelled armoured and non-armoured weapon systems, and all-wheel drive vehicles capable of off-road use.
Defence aircraft, spacecraft and their parts, helicopters, lighter-than-air vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, remotely piloted vehicles, warships of all kinds, vessels fitted with automatic weapons, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear protect, special naval equipment, anti-submarines or torpedo nets will also come under its purview.
The home ministry has, over the past three years, given security clearance to about 3,300 investment proposals after conducting national risk assessment. The objective of the national security clearance is to evaluate potential threats, visible or embedded, in proposals received by the home ministry and to provide a national risk assessment.
The national security clearance policy was drawn up by the home ministry to fast-track the security clearance process within 4-6 weeks as part of ease of business mantra under the ‘Make In India’ initiative.
According to the policy, the promoters, owners and directors of a company are mandated to give self declarations regarding any criminal history on their part, which reduced the period required to give security clearance from two to three months earlier to four to six weeks now.