NEW DELHI, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- India Wednesday stressed the need to speed up indigenous production of defense equipment in a bid to cut down the reliability on imports and thus avoid controversies like the recently unraveled multi-million-dollar chopper deal scam.
"I think our armed forces, government, the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), industry both public as well as private should come together in mission mode so that India can achieve maximum for indigenization in a reasonable time," Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony said.
"Whatever support is needed from the government, I assure you we will give. I am going to ask about our defence procurement and defence production policy so that we can speed up the indigenisation process," said the minister.
He was speaking at a seminar organized by the state-owned DRDO in the national capital.
The Defense Minister's statements came in the wake of the country's government last week ordering a high-level probe to determine whether kickbacks were allegedly paid by Italian defense giant Finmeccanica to acquire the 750 million U.S. dollars helicopter deal inked in 2010.
India, which has already received three of the 12 choppers from Finmeccanica's UK-based subsidiary AgustaWestland, had made it clear that it would scrap the deal if the allegations were proved to be correct.
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