The paucity of funds has forced soldiers to buy uniforms on their own, an Economic Times report said.
The Indian Army has decided to slash its supplies from state-owned ordnance factories. It plans to use the money to get adequate stock of critical ammunition and spares for a short intense war, the report said. In the absence of assistance from Centre, Army has been forced to make the arrangements for which it requires funds worth thousands of crores.
The products supplied by ordnance factories will be cut down from 94 to 50 per cent in the absence of additional funds for emergency procurement of ammunition and spares by the Centre. This would affect the supplies of combat dress, berets, belts, shoes to soldiers. The worse, however, is the fact that soldiers will have to shell out their own money to buy uniforms from civilian markets.
Citing shortage of funds, Army officials said that about Rs 5,000 crore has been spent on emergency procurement and another Rs 6,739.83 crore needs to be paid.
In a social media post, Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi has hit out at the Centre for playing politics in the name of the Army but doing nothing for them.
Other people also reacted sharply at the government’s move. Some of the tweets are:
https://twitter.com/GreenTransport5/status/1003878117977542656
https://twitter.com/GreenTransport5/status/1003876594958684160
https://twitter.com/bjp_ka1_virodhi/status/1003878097878315008
https://twitter.com/shuhaibim/status/1003896082940735488