NEW DELHI – Indian companies producing bulletproof jackets for the Army areimporting Chinese raw material due to price advantage but there are noconcerns yet about the quality of these body armours, a Niti Aayog memberhas said.
Niti Aayog member VK Saraswat, who is a former DRDO chief, stressed thatthey can intervene only if body armours produced with Chinese material arebelow standard, but there are no such reports as of now, India today hasreported.
The Prime Minster’s Office (PMO) had asked Niti Aayog to prepare a roadmapfor “incentivising” domestic manufacturing of lightweight body armours(bulletproof jackets). The Bureau of Indian Standards has also finalisedquality norms for body armours to be used by Indian forces, according toSaraswat.
He was replying to a question about concerns over the use of Chinese rawmaterial in the manufacturing of bulletproof jackets for Indian armedforces.
Playing down the concerns, Saraswat argued that the import of Chinese rawmaterial is market driven and cheaper than others.
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“That is a market force, we can’t do much about this. Only thing is if wefind that the bulletproof jackets produced by the Chinese material are notup to the mark, then we will have to say, as of now there is no suchreport,” the former DRDO chief told PTI.
“We have done standardisation of bulletproof jackets. The standards havebeen laid by Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). Testing standards have beenlaid.”
According to government projections, more than 3 lakh bulletproof jacketswill be required by Indian armed forces, Saraswat said, adding “based onthat, armed forces have already placed order with private companies inIndia for production of bullet proof jackets”.
