CVC to Govt: Don’t badmouth us

It was later, on June 30, during a meeting with the Minister and the MoD’s top brass, that ‘‘they (the Ministry) admitted there was a communication gap and various issues were discussed,’’ Shankar said.

Incidentally, a few days before his meeting with the CVC, Fernandes had said, in an interview to The Indian Express Editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta—for NDTV’s Walk the Talk programme—that ‘‘there is hardly any official in the Defence Ministry who would like to put his signature for anything that has to be purchased.’’

Shankar said that besides these and other insinuations from the MoD, even Finance Ministry bosses had voiced concerns about how vigilance inquiries created a fear psychosis and had effected functioning of banks.

As a counter, Shankar said if Ministries and Government departments evolved a transparent system, the environment would be much better.

About the CVC’s three-year-old defence inquiries he said, ‘‘The CVC had put in a lot of work into the inquiry but the feeling we got was that we were not wanted. That we were prying too much and asking questions that were demotivating MoD officials. The CVC was being identified with being obstructionist which is far from the truth.’’

Shankar said that it was this that led to his frustration. However, at his meeting with Fernandes and the Defence Secretary, some modalities were worked out.

For one, the CVC got an assurance that the ‘‘ad-hocism’’ with which files were being sent to the CVC would end. And, two, that representatives from the three armed forces would now attend future co-cordination meetings.

The CVC team was also apprised of how most of the lapses in procurement—as identified by the CVC itself—had been incorporated in the new Defence Procurement Procedures.

Following the Shankar-Fernandes meeting, the MoD too released a statement which noted how ‘‘general and systemic bottlenecks were identified which have been preventing expeditous implementation of the recommendations of CVC.’’

Taking note of The Indian Express report on a fresh vigilance case registered by the Western Naval Command, the CVC said while such scandals were still surfacing, the bogey of the CVC was being raised. ‘‘We don’t want to be accused of blocking vital procurements. What we want is systemic improvement.’’