Faulty ammunition led to death of 27 soldiers, loss of ₹960 Cr: Army

The Indian Army lost 27 soldiers due to the faulty ammunition which caused a loss of ₹960 crore since 2014, according to an Army report. It said on average the incident of one faulty ammunition takes place every week.

The report said the amount lost could have been used to buy 100 155-mm medium artillery guns such as the Howitzer.

“The poor quality of production is leading to accidents every year with an average of one accident every week. There were 403 such accidents which include 114 in 2014, 86 in 2015, 60 in 2016, 53 in 2017, 78 in 2018 and 16 in 2019,” said the report.

It said these accidents led to the death of 27 soldiers and injuries to 146 others. This year 13 soldiers have been injured in such accidents.

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The Army had to destroy such faulty ammunition valued at ₹658.58 crore even when these ammunitions still had a shelf life. In May 2016, there was a blast in anti-tank mines in Pulgaon due to some fault in them. The Army had to destroy such mines costing Rs 303.23 crore to obviate the chances of further accidents.

In the latest  report, updated till July, the Army has recommended corporatisation of the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), which aligns with the government’s plan to corporatise the 41 ordnance factories, 13 development centres and nine institutes of learning under the Board.

Indian ordnance factories are industrial setups functioning under the Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence. The conglomerate of 41 factories has nine training institutes, three regional marketing centres and four regional controllers of safety.

After the government decided to convert the OFBs into one or more than one 100 per cent government-owned corporate entities, it has constituted an empowered group of ministers (EGoM), under the chairmanship of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. The EGoM will oversee and guide the entire process, including transition support and redeployment plans of employees while safeguarding their wages and retirement benefits.

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This is not the first time the Army has raised questions on supplies under OFB. Earlier this year, an internal assessment had mentioned that as OFB factories are the “main source of supply of arms and ammunition” to the Army, “any drop in quality of OFB products has a major bearing on the war-waging potential of the country”.

The assessment had found that since 2014, there has been, on average, an ammunition-related accident “every 5.5 days or once a week”. It mentioned that accidents occur “primarily due to faulty ammunition, defective armament and faulty drills by the crew operating the equipment or due to deficiencies in storage conditions”.