Close on the the heels of defence minister AK Antony?s call to end the role of middlemen in arms deals, the minister of state for defence has called for a national debate on the issue.
At a press conference on the sidelines of the ongoing Defexpo 2008, the minister of state for defence Rao Inderjit Singh said, ?I feel there should be a national debate on this issue.?
?There should be a debate on these middlemen who are hiding in various nooks and corners. Should they be registered? We need to take a view on this after achieving political consensus,? Singh said. However, when it was pointed out that his views were not in sync with those of Antony, he said this was not so. ?He is my minister and I am not in conflict with him,? he contended.
It maybe recalled that on the opening day of the expo, the defence minister had very clearly asserted , ?There is no question of middlemen in defence deals.?
This is not the first time Singh has spoken in this fashion. His contention is that there is many a slip between the government’s intentions and its methods of implementing them. According to him, a debate on the issue of middlemen would serve to bring it out of the closet into the public domain.