NEW DELHI: The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday also touched upon cost overruns in submarine repairs and also slammed the Railway ministry over its safety record.
DELAY, COST OVERRUNS IN SUBMARINE REPAIRS
The CAG has hit out at the defence ministry for poorly planning the refit of a Russia-made submarine that led to the warship being unavailable to the navy for nearly a decade.
In a report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, the top auditor also slammed the ministry for significant cost overruns in the project, with the refit cost of INS Sindhukirti shooting up from 629.50 crore to almost
1,175 crore. The submarine is one of the Indian Navy’s 10 Kilo class boats bought from Russia between 1986 and 2000.
The medium refit of the submarine was awarded to Vizag-based Hindustan Shipyard Limited for the first time to develop indigenous repair capabilities at a time when the Kilo class boats were routinely sent to Russia for overhaul.
The medium refit of the submarine kicked off five years behind schedule in January 2006 and was supposed to be completed by January 2009. However, the yard delivered the boat to the navy, which is grappling with a depleting combat potential of its underwater arm, only in June 2015 with sea acceptance trials to follow.The CAG attributed the delay to “deficiency in manpower deployment by the yard, delayed supply of yard materials and modernization of equipment.” The auditor recommended that the navy should establish dedicated project teams to monitor refits and the ministry should exercise stringent financial controls.
RAILWAYS FACE FLAK TOO
Noting with concern that the number of train accidents went up by 160% during 2003 to 2013, the CAG slammed the Railways for not uniformly making available the sanctioned safety items to different zones. In the three year period from 2010 to 2013, as many as 814 coaches, wagons and locomotives remained idle in 10 railway zones for periods of 668 days for want of safety items, resulting in the loss of earning capacity of 348.37 crore, the country’s top audit body pointed out in its report tabled in Parliament. The report pointed out that there were instances of en route detachment of coaches and wagons due to use of inferior quality of items.