New Delhi :A parliamentary committee report has said that quality compromises, substandard raw materials, and ageing weaponry contributed to 269 accidents involving four key small arms in the Indian Army over five years, starting from 2015–16.
The Public Accounts Committee, in its 54th report on “Production of Small Arms in Ordnance Factories”, which is based on Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) Report No. 5 of 2023 relating to the Ministry of Defence (Department of Defence Production), has exposed incompetence and inefficient working conditions at State-owned Advanced Weapons and Equipment India Ltd (AWEIL) — which post corporatisation of ordnance factory boards in 2021 governs 8 manufacturing and production units. They include the Small Arms Factory, Kanpur, Rifle Factory Ishapore, Ordnance Factory Tiruchirappalli, and Ordnance Factory Project Korwa.
“The Defect Investigation (DI) committee attributed the accidents mainly to quality problems in components, deviation in hardness measurements, and nonconformance of input material with specifications,” the report highlighted serious concerns at various levels of production.
Shockingly, the findings also flagged systemic procedural lags, noting that safety panels often failed to conduct timely investigations and enforce immediate corrective actions to prevent recurring failures. The DI committee also “failed to ensure timely investigation and prompt remedial measures to avoid recurrence,” PAC, headed by Congress MP KC Venugopal, observed.
“The Committee are of the considered opinion that the Ministry need to work not only at the scale but also on the quality of the production at Small Arms Ordnance Factories to revive them into thriving productions,” the report said.
In its response to queries regarding accountability for quality assurance agencies like the Directorate General of Quality Assurance (DGQA), the Ministry of Defence pointed out, “Based on defect investigation outcome, DGQA suggests remedial measures to arrest the recurrence of these defects. The defects could be due to issues related to procurement of input material, production process, integration process of the weapon, defect in the ammunition, quality control by the factory, quality assurance by DGQA and faulty drills by the user.”
“For the majority of the DI cases, it has also been observed in the DI Report that most of the weapons (5.56mm INSAS) have a year of manufacturing as 1998/1999/2003 — i.e., weapons were older than 22 years,” the Ministry stated, adding that the benchmark for discarding an INSAS rifle is 22 years or 10,000 rounds fired, whichever comes earlier. “End-of-life or nearing end-of-life of weapon is the common probable cause of failure in most of the DI cases.”
Audit found that the Quality Control (QC) section of Rifle Factory Ishapore, located in West Bengal, was carrying out only sample-based checks on input materials instead of the mandatory 100 per cent checks prescribed in the Quality Assurance Plan (QAP).
The parliamentary findings highlight multi-agency delays in investigating weapons failures. While internal mandates require defect reports to be filed within 30 days of an incident, multi-agency coordination — involving user units, Ordnance Factories, the DRDO, and specialised quality agencies—frequently stretched probe timelines.
The Committee further desired that the Ministry consider moving from end-of-line inspection toward in-process quality checks to catch defects earlier, reducing costly rejections.
The post-corporatisation data for AWEIL shared with the panel show that the gap between defect observation and sharing the DI report ranged from 11 months in FY 2021–22 down to 3 months in FY 2022–23, before settling at an average of 6.5 months across three recorded cases in FY 2025–26.
The Ministry noted that steps, including quarterly reviews at the HQ DGQA level and tighter inter-agency coordination, are being actively utilised to track and reduce future investigation backlogs.
