The Defence Ministry is set to optimise the civil and military administrative appointments in the service headquarters. A three-member committee has been set up to review the effective utilisation of the Armed Forces Headquarters Civil Services (AFHQ CS) cadre.
This is in line with the recommendation of the Lt. Gen. DB Shekatkar (retd) committee on enhancing the military’s combat potential and rebalancing defence expenditure.
One of the Terms of Reference (ToR) of the committee is: “To conduct a study and identify such appointments in Service HQs and Inter-Service Organisations (ISO) that may fall within the domains of AFHQ CS officers as recognised in the report by the committee of experts due to their longer tenures and expertise.” The other is to identify the posts presently tenanted by the AFHQ CS officers that require strictly military expertise and to be manned by defence forces personnel.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has approved the constitution of the committee headed by Lt. Gen. Shekatkar (retd). Other members are R. Chandrashekhar, a retired AFHQ cadre officer and AN Das from the MoD finance wing. The committee will interact with various branches, directorates of service headquarters and ISOs for the study and is expected to submit its report by November.
Savings of up to ₹25,000 crore
The 11-member Shekatkar committee was appointed by then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar in 2016 with a broad mandate and had made 216 recommendations from optimising defence budget to the need for a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). It had suggested that if implemented over the next five years, it can result in savings of up to ₹25,000 crore in defence expenditure. Several recommendations pertaining to the Army were implemented in 2017. Implementation of several others is under way.
In May, Mr. Singh had approved a proposal for the abolition of 9,304 posts of basic and industrial staff in the Military Engineering Service (MES), another recommendation of the committee.