Coimbatore ; Defence Minister, Nirmala Seetharaman on Sunday accused previous UPA regime for doing nothing to improve the skills and standards of Defence Public Sector Understanding (DPSU), like HAL and BHEL.

“It is not not a set back for indigenisation. It is fact that many things have to be improved in the PSUs,”;Nirmala told reporters as reply to a specific question on the death of two squadron leaders in the Mirage Jet crash at Bengaluru a couple of days ago and the reaction of Air Chief Marshal that while indigenistaion is important, it comes with a price and whether it was a kind of set back for indenisation.

It was not not a set back. For the 10 years they (UPA) had done nothing to upgrade the DPSUs, whether it was HAL or BHEL, she said.

They could have upgraded them by going for capital investment, upgraded the machinery and giving modern skills to the workers so that production could be of international quality, she said.

If they had done these things in the 10 years, the opportunity could have been there to take the PSUs at the world standards, but they failed, she said adding that we started taking efforts to upgrade the PSUs and also shipyards.

As for Indeginisation PSUs was one part and being in Coimbatore, many industries in private sector have good technology and produced world class products, she said that Make In India can happen not only through public  sector, it can happen even through private sector also.