Hyderabad: The Central Government sanctioned nine projects to Telangana under the Technological Development Fund plan for the manufacture of various defence equipment, the union minister of state for defence, Ajay Bhatt, Union Minister of State for Defence, stated in Lok Sabha that 68 projects had been sanctioned to 14 states throughout the nation.
While Karnataka and Maharashtra both received 14 projects, Tamil Nadu received nine and Uttar Pradesh received five.
To date, 68 projects totalling Rs. 287.40 crore have been sanctioned under the TDF Program. The DRDO’s share is Rs.250.12 crore, and Rs.58.87 crore of that has been released, he added.
In response to a question from Girish Bhalchandra Bapat, he stated that the government has taken several policy initiatives and reforms in recent years to encourage indigenous design, development, and manufacture of defence equipment, thereby promoting self-reliance in defence manufacturing in the country. These initiatives include prioritising the acquisition of capital items from domestic sources under the Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP)-2020.
Among the several attempts are the simplification of the industrial licence procedure with a longer validity time; liberalisation of the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policy, which allows 74 percent FDI via the automatic route; and simplification of the ,ake Procedure.
