FinMin shoots down proposal for 'non-lapsable defence modernisation fund'

The Finance Ministry has offered several reasons for turning down the proposal for a non-lapsable DMF

The finance ministry has shot down the defence ministry’s proposal to implement a longstanding quest of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — to create a “non-lapsable defence modernisation fund (DMF)”, in which the military’s unspent capital budget is parked at the end of each financial year, from where it can be made available for the subsequent year’s procurements. 

The military points out that bureaucratic delay in sanctioning capital (modernisation) expenditure led to the surrender of billions of rupees in successive years, severely disrupting the military’s long-term modernisation plan. The BJP has traditionally been sympathetic to this perspective. 

On February 3,