It’s not the first time Defence Minister A K Antony has delegated work and limited his own role in the process to a minimum. “Less of the minister and more of the ministry” has been his trademark style, officials point out.
In April this year, Antony gave up his “sanctioning powers” for last minute tweaking of defence tender provisions; the decision coming in the backdrop of bribery charges in the `3,546-crore VVIP helicopter deal. The responsibility to approve any deviation from the prescribed defence procurement procedure (DPP) hitherto rested with the minister.
Abdicating his powers, Antony simply brought in more thinking heads to the table and vested “sanctioning powers” with the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), the highest decision-making body of the ministry that is chaired by him and comprises his junior minister, the three armed forces chiefs and the ministry’s department secretaries.
After criticism mounted in early 2012 over delays in acquisitions, and two months after former Army chief General V K Singh’s letter to the PM on gaps in defence preparedness, Antony met the service chiefs in May that year and hiked their financial powers from `50 crore to `150 crore. The move was aimed at accelerating the process of procurement. Just a fortnight before that decision, the Antony-chaired DAC had approved the procurement of 145 ultra-light howitzers for the Army to plug gaps in and strengthen its mountain warfare capabilities. The selection of the guns came after the (DRDO) chief V K Saraswat, who was earlier asked to study the howitzers and its suitability to Indian conditions, had given a favourable report.
The proposal was to buy the BAE Systems’ M777 howitzers off-the-shelf in a government-to-government deal with the US. Over a year since that decision, the Defence Ministry bureaucrats are yet to process that deal, which was touted as “an urgent requirement” by the Army.
A month before the M777 decision, Antony, at a meeting with the Army top brass to finalise its capital acquisition proposals, had asked the Army to streamline and prioritise its purchases processes in a manner that accountability can be fixed in the event of slippages.