After the announcement of ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’ by the Prime Minister’, a new initiative has been taken by Ministry of Defence. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday. He said that they have made a list of 101 items which they have officially banned. Rajnath Singh announced this on Twitter, on Sunday.
Missile destroyers, ship-borne cruise missiles, light combat aircraft, artillery guns, light transport aircraft, long-range land attack cruise missiles, a variety of radars, communication satellites, basic trainer aircraft, multi-barrel rocket launchers, assault rifles, sniper rifles, mini UAVs and different types of ammunition are included in the list.
The defence minister said that the list also includes, wheeled Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFVs) with indicative import embargo date of December 2021, of which the Army is expected to contract almost 200 at an approximate cost of over Rs 5,000 crore.
Defence sector created separate budget for buying locally-made military hardware and notifying a list of weapons/equipment that cannot be imported also they collected funds from foreign direct investment (FDI) for defence manufacturing.
Minister decided to implement this ban between 2020 and 2024. Every year they started to manufacture more equipment, and the list of banned items reviewed so that they can eliminate more items. All the decisions will be taken after the discussions with department of military affairs (DMA).
Numerous consultations with all stakeholders, including the military and the industry, and factoring in future capabilities of the defence sector to locally manufacture equipment and ammunition had been done and then the list was decided after several rounds of consultations.
Tri-Services were contracted at an approximate cost of Rs 3.5 lakh crore between April 2015 and August 2020 for almost 260 items. Within next 6 to 7 years it is estimated that contracts worth of RS 4 Lakh Crore will be placed on domestic industry.
Chief of defence staff General Bipin Rawat, is made responsible to promote the use of indigenous military equipment in the armed forces. It is one of the key responsibilities assigned by the government to the DMA.
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