Rajnath Singh, the Defence Minister, on Sunday, announced
that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) will impose embargo on import of 101 items beyond the
given timeline to boost indigenisation of defence production. This will give an
important push to the Atma Nirbhar Bharat initiative, Rajnath Singh said. However, P Chidambaram, senior
Congress leader, hit out at the Defence Minister and said that “his historic
Sunday announcement deserved only an Office Order from the Minister to his
Secretaries.”

Chidambaram tweeted that the Defence Minister promised a ‘bang’ but ended with a ‘whimper’.

Further explaining his point, Chidambaram said that the only
importer of defence equipment is the Defence Ministry. Any import embargo is
really an embargo on oneself.

“Import Embargo is high sounding jargon. What it means is we
will try to make the same equipment (that we import today) in 2 to 4 years and
stop imports thereafter,” he added in another tweet.

“The embargo on imports is planned to be progressively
implemented between 2020 to 2024. Our aim is to apprise the Indian defence
industry about the anticipated requirements of the Armed Forces so that they
are better prepared to realise the goal of indigenization,” said Rajnath Singh in his announcement
on Sunday.

According to Singh, the list of the 101 embargoed items have
been prepared after several rounds of consultations with all stakeholders,
including the Armed Forces, public and private industry. It includes some high-tech
weapon systems like artillery guns, assault rifles, corvettes, sonar systems,
transport aircraft, LCHs, radars and many other items that will fulfill needs of
the defence services.