Thursday, January 12 2006 20:05 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Faced with the prospect of having to surrender funds, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee has pulled up the top Army brass for reported under-utilisation of allocated budgetary grants and tardy clearance of weapons acquisition projects.

The Minister came down on the army brass at a meeting this week as Defence Financial indicators indicated that Army, unlike its two sister services Navy and Air Force, had only been able to utilise 43 per cent of the budgetary allocation on capital outlay till December. The figure last year was 63 per cent.

Under the new Finance Ministry directive, no ministry can spend more than 33 per cent of total funds allocation for the year in a quarter to prevent bunching of expenditure.

Peeved over the tardy clearance of modernization programme, the Minister, sources said, told the army brass to sort out differences across the table in a definite timeframe to avoid delay in weapons induction and other major modernization programmes.

Mukherjee, the sources said, also voiced his anger at the delay in replying to queries raised by Members of Parliament on major defence issues. According to sources, the Army's reveune expenditure has also been tardy.

After a gap of five years, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government was able to fully utilise its budgetary allocation on capital outlay.

So far the Defence Ministry had cleared only two major defence deals for purchase under technology transfer French Scorpene submarines and to purchase three VVIP aircraft from the US company Boeing.