Amid India-Pakistan tensions, long leaves cancelled at ordnance factories

Amid ongoing India-Pakistan tensions following the Pahalgam attack, long leaves have been cancelled at one of the country’s largest ordnance factories.

Multiple manufacturing units under state-owned Munitions India Limited (MIL), the largest ammunition-maker in the country, have reported the cancellation of long leaves. Employees are only allowed leaves of up to days for next two months.

The cancellation of long leaves is not, however, related to India-Pakistan tensions but is the result of rush to meet pre-existing production targets, said Avinash Shankar, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of Ordnance Factory Khamaria (OFK) in Madhya Pradesh’s, which is a unit of Pune-headquartered MIL.

Shankar told PTI, “The leave of more than two days of officers and employees has been cancelled with immediate effect to meet the production target. Since our target of this fiscal is huge and in April, we haven’t achieved our desired target, therefore to compensate for it we have been directed by the HQ to cancel leave so that we have sufficient workforce and supervision.”

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Leaves cancelled at multiple ordnance factories

The Times of India reported that leaves were also cancelled at MIL’s units at Madhya Pradesh’s Itarsi and Cossipore in Kolkata.

An official at the unit in Jabalpur told the newspaper that the order was issued “in view of national security” and an official at the Itarsi unit confirmed this.

In an apparent reference to the India-Paksitan tensions, A staffer at the Cossipore unit said that leaves had been cancelled in the “current scenario”.

While refusing to confirm or deny the development, an officer told the newspaper that any such order it would be “logical if leaves were cancelled given the current situation”.

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Following the Pahalgam attack in which terrorists killed 26 people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed to mount a response. Pakistan responded by moving military assets closer to the border. The rhetoric on Pakistan’s side, which has ranged from warmongering to invocation of nuclear weapons, has further inflamed tensions between the two countries.

The Pune-based MIL with its 12 factories across the country are the Ministry of Defence’s main ammunition-manufacturing entity. They produce bullets for small arms, bombs for the Indian Air Force, rockets, and artillery shells, among others.