Arun Jaitley took over as Defence Minister here today. On his arrival at the Ministry of Defence in South Block, Shri Jaitley was received by Defence Secretary Shri RK Mathur and other senior officials. After taking over as the Defence Minister, Shri Jaitley informally interacted with the media and outlined the priority areas of the government. He said “Security of India is a matter of prime importance and predominantly the external security of India is the responsibility of this Ministry”. For this he stated that “preparedness and support to our Armed Forces and speeding up all equipment required for their support are going to be the priority areas as far as our government is concerned”. He also remarked that over the last few years some of the areas in the Ministry had slowed down and therefore, expediting them will be a matter of top priority.
Replying to a question of enhancing the FDI limit beyond the existing 26 percent, he said, this is an issue which will be dealt with by his two Ministries and added that it has already come up in his preliminary discussions in the Finance Ministry, today. Later, the Defence Minister took stock of various developments in the Ministry by interacting with the Defence Secretary Shri RK Mathur, Secretary (Defence Production) Shri GC Pati, Secretary Ex-Servicemen Welfare Smt Sangita Gairola and Scientific Advisor to Defence Minister Shri Avinash Chander. This was followed by the three Service Chiefs calling on the Defence Minister in his chamber. Shri Jaitley also took a meeting of senior officials of the Ministry, where he discussed the working of the Ministry and other important issues.