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Journalism of Courage
Breaking from convention,the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence today decided to call the three service Chiefs on April 20 to seek their views on the state of defence preparedness as was pointed out by Army Chief General V K Singh in his controversial letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
It is said to be the first time that the committee has called all three chiefs although the Public Accounts Committee had summoned them last year in connection with the CAG’s report on Canteen Stores Department (CSD). While the Naval Chief was not available then and was represented by Vice-Chief,the other two services chiefs had presented themselves before the PAC.
Usually,the office of the Vice-chief in all the three services is entrusted with the task of representing their respectives forces before the standing committee. Over the years,this has become a convention and part of the division of labour within the services hierarchy.
An indication of what could be in store at the next meeting came when Congress MP Manish Tewari was learnt to have asked whether there are enough war reserves available if hostilities were to begin,say,the next day. Vice-Chief of the Army Staff conceded that while war-fighting stocks have to be for 40 days,in some areas like Armour Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding Sabot (a special tank ammunition),stocks are down to four days. The Vice-Chief,however,clarified that it does not mean that tanks will run dry.
At the last committee meeting on April 4,Akali Dal Rajya Sabha Member Naresh Gujral had asked the chairman to summon the Army Chief to throw light on the matter in the context of his letter to the Prime Minister. On Monday,however,the committee took the view that all three chiefs should be called as the committee needs to examine the whole spectrum of defence preparedness.
Sources said that the committee would also look at capacity and operationalisation of the capacity in terms of threat perception and geo-political strategy.
The Army Chief had,in his letter to the Prime Minister,given his views on the alarming expansion of the Chinese military pointing out that the creation of two new Army divisions for the North-East are stuck in the finance ministry and that the Army’s war-fighting capabilities are “seriously impaired”. He had echoed similar views in a letter to Defence Minister A K Antony in February in which he had said that the war-waging capability of the Army had been “seriously degraded” with the government dragging its feet on critical procurements and policy measures.
