Government Nod for Defense Reforms

August 30: A Crucial decision was taken today.
Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi today has taken some crucial decisions. Defense Minister Arun Jaitley has briefed the media after the cabinet meeting.

He has said that "The government today has cleared 65 recommendations of the Shekatkar committee."

Earlier the Government in consultation with Indian Army has formed a committee to recommend the steps needed for enhancing combat capability and rebalancing defense expenditure of defense forces to increase the teeth to tail ratio.

Defense Minister has said that "A major reform was taken today in Ministry of Defense with the consultation of Indian Army in a planned manner post Independence".

He said concerned orders would be passed and these would operationalize by the end of 2019.

Minister has also said that the recommendations would change the functions of the Army in the changing circumstances such as Technology, economy and Combat capability.

The committee has made 99 recommendations and these relate to various issues such as

* need of Military farms.
* need of separate postal department with the technology available.
* Different signal establishments and their functioning.
* Repair equivalence of Army base workshops etc.

Finally, he has said that "this will lead to a redeployment of 57,000 officers/JCOs/ORs for various other functions in Indian army".

Many other decisions were taken and gave approval for various MOUs signed with other countries.