Our armed forces have adequate defence equipment, prepared to face any eventuality: Arun Jaitley

New Delhi: Amid the ongoing stand-off going between Indian and Chinese military at Doklam, Union Defence Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday assured the Lok Sabha that India Army has enough force to tackle any kind of situation and are prepared to face any eventuality. 

"The armed forces have adequate defence equipment to tackle any exigency," Jaitley said in response to a question on reports of troop movements in Tibet by China and a senior Army officer's statement that Pakistan's defence industry was better than India's.

Jaitley's statements without making having direct reference to Doklam.

When asked about a CAG report which had stated that the defence forces have ammunition that can last for 22 days in an event of a war, instead of the mandatory 40 days, the defence minister contended that significant progress has been made on this front thereafter, but did not elaborate.

"This question has been asked earlier also and I will only reiterate what I had said. Our defence forces have adequate equipment to face any eventuality," Jaitely said, without any mention of the Doklam stand-off which has been going on for nearly two months.

The defence minister said the findings of the CAG report, which had talked about the shortage of ammunition, related to a particular point of time.

"Thereafter significant process has been made. It is a continuous process. Therefore, nobody should have any doubt about the availability of equipment or the preparedness of our forces," he asserted.

Jaitley also sought to allay fears of closure of ordnance defence factories, saying all these factories and defence PSUs are going to continue and no employee will be retrenched.

"The core expertise of these ODFs (ordnance factories) is (manufacturing) ammunition and they will continue to do that," he added.