New Delhi, Aug. 21: The defence ministry has decided to revive a Rs 1,400-crore project in Nalanda, Bihar, to make artillery charges eight months after the Ordnance Factory Board decided to shelve it.

The project was being pushed by former defence minister George Fernandes, who was elected from Nalanda, but cost overruns and the blacklisting of South African armaments company Denel, which was collaborating in the venture, had put the project on the backburner.

In December 2005, minister of state for defence B.K. Handique told BJP Lok Sabha MP Sushil Modi in a written reply that “an expenditure of Rs 306.04 crore has been incurred on the construction of the ordnance factory at Rajgir (in Nalanda district) till date. The construction of the factory has been kept in abeyance”.

But now the defence ministry has asked the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) to prepare a cabinet note for the project to manufacture modular charges of artillery rounds for the 155-mm Bofors Howitzers with the Indian Army.

The project can still run into controversy for two reasons.

First, the decision to revive it flies in the face of a recommendation by the standing committee on defence in its seventh report to the Lok Sabha that said “no new ordnance factories should come up and the existing capacity and facilities should be enhanced”.

The Nalanda project would be the 40th ordnance factory.

Second, environmentalists and Buddhist monks have pointed out to tourism minister Ambika Soni that the land earmarked for the project is too close to Nalanda’s Shanti Stupa.

Soni has assured delegations from Nalanda, famous for the ruins of an ancient Buddhist university, that she will urge defence minister Pranab Mukherjee to take a fresh look at the proposal.

In clarifications given to the standing committee on defence that asked why all funds for the ordnance factories were not utilised, the ministry said this was because the Nalanda project was “put on hold”. But now the OFB has been asked to detail the requirements of the project for which Rs 1,348 crore was being earmarked for the 10th Plan period ending in 2007.

The OFB has been asked to prepare a note for the cabinet after an expert committee carried out a detailed review and submitted it to the defence ministry. “It has been decided to start the remaining work of the Nalanda ordnance factory project and a revised cabinet note is being worked out by the OFB,” the defence ministry told the standing committee.

The government was in talks with Denel and a German equipment manufacturer for technology to manufacture bi-modular charges for the army’s 155-mm Bofors artillery systems when the project was shelved.