Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has approved a proposal for bringing in industry-friendly reform related to generating, updating and declaring obsolete entire information of military products. Now the Industry has been empowered to do it on their own.
So far, Directorate General of Quality Assurance (DGQA) was the “Authority Holding Sealed Particulars” (AHSP) responsible for generating, maintaining, updating or declaring obsolete the entire history and technical information of defence products. It the AHSP for majority of defence items designed, developed and manufactured by various DPSUs and private industries, officially stated the defence ministry. Now, the Indian defence companies, which have developed products, systems, subsystems, components on their own indigenous capabilities (except critical stores), will be allowed to own and account for their final designs and specification as AHSP, the ministry said.
The amendments were brought since due to the “existing procedure”, the defence ministry said, “certain bottlenecks were experienced by the industry to bring timely improvements in their products and technologies in line with changing times”. So, the Ministry has decided to liberalise the AHSP procedures and make it industry-friendly.
In case of any change in the sealed particulars, a simplified mechanism representing all the concerned stakeholders, including the industry, will take a decision and the DGQA will notify the detailed procedure in this regard within two months, the ministry announced.