Kirkee

·         In July 2008 CAG report put that ammunition factory at Kirkee, under OFB, failed to adopt amended specifications and manufactured mines according to old design, using substandard material, which resulted in about 20,000 mines being discarded and involved a loss of around Rs 10 crore.

·         Based upon an Army indent, the OFB had placed an order with the factory for the supply of 32,000 anti-personnel mines to the Central Ammunition Depot.

·         CAG report says, the factory had been experiencing problems in the manufacture of the mines.

·         To sort them out and improve user satisfaction, the factory had convened a meeting with representatives from High Energy Materials Research Laboratory (HEMRL), which had designed the ammunition, and Directorate General of Quality Assurance.

·         The CAG has also noted that the ammunition factory has an obligation to replace the mines condemned for destruction, free of cost.

Mission IAS’2009

·         Khadki lies just north of the city of Pune has a large army base on the banks of the River Mula. Besides the army base, it also has two ordinance factories and several breweries.Its borders are flanked by two other large army establishments - the College of Military Engineering & the Bombay Engineering Group. It also has a large War cemetery.

·         The Khadki (Kirkee) Cantonment is housed here. It has a large market, Khadki bazaar and a railway station. Khadki is also known as a bastion of hockey.Khadki was the site of the Battle of Khadki, fought between the British East India Company and the Marathas in 1817 in which Baji Rao, the Peshwa ruler was defeated. Soon after the war, the British set up a cantonment here.

·         It then became the base of the Royal Regiment of Artillery's 79 (Khadki) Commando Battery. World War I Field Marshall William Birdwood, 1st Baron Birdwood was born in Khadki.

·         Khadki has two major Ordnance Factories - Ammunition Factory Khadki and High Explosives Factory.

·         HEMRL, the High Energy Materials Research Laboratory of the Defence Research & Development Organization (DRDO), is located in Pune

·         Its main function is the research and development of technologies and products in the area of High Energy Materials and Explosive materials.

·         The precursor to HEMRL was the Chemical Examiner's Office which was established in 1908 at Nainital.

·         In 1960, it was renamed as Explosives Research & Development Laboratory (ERDL) and was located in Pashan, Pune. In 1963, it was placed under DRDO control as a full fledged R&D laboratory.

·         ERDL was renamed as HEMRL in March 1995 in order to emphasise its work in all aspects of high energy materials research