Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju told the Lok Sabha that the Ministry has received altogether 14 Foreign Direct Investment proposals in 2014 for granting security clearance in strategic sectors like aviation and telecom out of which only one has been cleared so far.
Rijiju said in 2013, a total of 42 FDI proposals were received by the Home Ministry for security clearance and 27 of them had been cleared while in 2012, 36 FDI proposals were received for security clearance and 33 of these were granted clearance.
"However, concerns have been expressed by sectoral ministries/ departments relating to delay in security vetting of FDI proposals including those in strategic sectors like aviation and telecom," he said in a written reply.
Rijiju said proposals from sectoral ministries/ departments, complete in all respects, as and when received are immediately sent to central agencies for obtaining inputs. Obtaining the comments and inputs from the concerned agencies is a time consuming process as it entails collection of information from field formations.
"As decisions on issues relating to national security are taken with due care, the delay, if any, is a part of the process of due diligence," he said.