(From left) Indian Army officers in ceremonial winter, summer and summer (while parading) uniforms

New Delhi, June 7: Defence minister A.K. Antony has given a dressing down to the official suppliers of army uniforms making the top brass happy and hopeful about dressing up the soldiery.

Antony told the ordnance factory board, the supplier of military clothing and equipment, yesterday that it must shore up its performance and tailor its products to the soldiers’ demands.

Senior officers are now expecting Antony will spur the defence establishment into taking its proposals on outfitting a little more seriously. At the top of the list is the revival of a proposal to bring professional designers to fashion uniforms for soldiers who must be equipped for both the extreme cold to and the extreme heat of the desert.

Indian Army officers and soldiers have dress codes for almost every ceremonial occasion but it is in the regular line of duties that most of them find their uniforms uncomfortable.

In Siachen, the soldiers have complained that wind-proof jackets do not shield them from the icy gusts. In the desert, soldiers complained that sand and heat that their uniforms do not withstand can make them dehydrated.

And in the Northeast, the waterproof jackets leave them soaked to the skin. The upshot is that many soldiers and officers buy their uniforms from private dealers and not necessarily from the outlet of the ordnance factory board, the official supplier.

But most of all, the top brass complained, the distinctiveness of the Indian Army’s uniform is fast vanishing with central and state police forces assigning to their personnel uniforms indistinguishable from the military’s.

“Ensure that jawans in the difficult areas, where it is very cold or very hot, get the most comfortable clothes,” Antony told the directors of the ordnance factory board. “The quality of a product ultimately depends on how satisfied the end-user (the soldier) is.”

The unhappiness with the uniforms they get has also spawned a racket.

In July 2007, for example, a joint raid by the army and Jammu and Kashmir police in Leh, the headquarters of the 14 corps, found civilian dealers selling specialised clothing and equipment meant for soldiers in Siachen.

Another investigation found that 17,000 defective jackets were issued to troops on counter-insurgency duty in Jammu and Kashmir earlier this year.

With Antony now taking up cudgels on their behalf, senior army officials are hopeful that a proposal by the army’s dress regulation committee to tie-up with the centres like the National Institute of Design or the National Institute of Fashion Technology will be taken up more seriously.

“A major problem is that the uniform is not uniform,” a senior officers said, when quizzed about the proposal. “We say, for example, a disruptive pattern on camouflage dress but the patterns are different.”

He meant that the combat fatigues worn by soldiers and officers have not been standardised. The model is the standardised pattern that soldiers wear when they go abroad for international meets.

Army officers buy their own uniforms while personnel below officer rank are given supplies according to the needs of terrain and weather periodically. The ordnance factory supplies the special duty uniforms — such as the disruptive-pattern overalls, wind and waterproof jackets and trousers and the coat parkas. The quality of these are wanting, the soldiers have complained, and do not allow for easy and quick movement.

The army brass hopes that with professional help on the quality of textile and stitching of the linings, much of these can be overcome.