BJP to spill beans on defence spill-overs

The BJP, which is committed towards ‘zero tolerance’ on corruption as per their ‘chargesheet report’ is planning to take on the defence ministry for ‘siphoning off’’ crores of rupees in the name of ‘spill-over’.

‘Spill-over’ is the term used by the ministry where ‘defence gear’ or ‘any item’ that not manufactured but existed only on paper was shown as ‘issued’ in every financial year. Shockingly, it was also shown in the accounts of Ordance factories.

A senior BJP leader said: ‘Now that it is almost certain that we are going to form the next government, we will take on all the corruption charges against the Defence ministry. There are talks to appoint former Army chief VK Singh to head the probe, especially on spill-over.’

When asked why they are focusing on ‘spill-over’ in the midst of big scams including the Choppergate, he said, ‘The spill-over issue was not raised by anyone before and the accused made obscene amounts of money over the years. On one hand, our jawans are risking life and limb for the country and here in the ministry people are cheating the nation.’

It was learnt that the ‘chargesheet’ committee of the party, after going through the records, found that mainly five Ordnance factories — Ordnance Equipment Factory Kanpur (OEFC), Ordnance Parachute Factory (OPF), Ordnance Clothing Factory, Avadi (OCFA), Ordnance Clothing Factory, Shahjahanpur (OCFS), and Ordnance Equipment Factory, Hazaratpur (OEFH) — were found to be involved in the dubious deal.

In 2007, the Controller General of Defence Accounts (CGDA) alerted all the Controllers of Finance and Accounts (Factories) that advance issue vouchers were being prepared by ordinance factories without any physical issue of stores to the services in order to take payment from the services.

‘Then to prevent the irregularities, the CGDA instructed all controllers at Finance and Accounts (Factories) not to accept advance issue vouchers without dispatch. But we have found that these five factories violated the instruction and engaged in ‘spill-over’ to the tune of nearly Rs 493.08 crore from 2008 to 2012,’ the BJP leader said.

He said, ‘The maximum number of such cases in terms of money looted has been reported from Kanpur and Shahjahanpur. In Kanpur the spillover was more than Rs 212 crore and in Shahjahanpur it was Rs 169 crore.’ It was learnt that the Defence Secretary (Production) had assured the Defence Minister AK Antony that there would be no spill over in production. ‘But despite that report of such malpractice was reported,’ he said.