A nine-member committee headed by former Principal Scientific Advisor to government, K Vijay Raghavan, has been set up by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to review functioning of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and suggest “restructuring and redefining” of its role to improve the output of the state-owned agency, aiding government’s move to make India self-reliant in military sector.

Defence minister Rajnath Singh gave the nod for review of the DRDO functioning more than a fortnight back and the committee has been asked to submit its report in three month’s time, government sources told businessline. There are about 7,000 scientists, said ministry sources aware of development, working with the DRDO and there was need to fix accountability to clean up the system, enthuse professionalism and ensure time bound delivery mechanisms.

On the directions of the MoD, the DRDO had also taken punitive action against black sheeps in the organisation including sacking a senior scientist, Pradeep Kurulkar, who was arrested in May by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) for passing confidential information to a Pakistani agent.

After the committee submits its report, the ministry plans to have a brainstorming session on it with the help of domain experts including from abroad, government sources stated.

Other members of the committee are - former Deputy Chief of Army Lt Gen (Retd) Subrata Saha, former Vice Chief of Navy, Vice-Admiral SN Ghormade, former Chief of Integrated Staff Air Marshal BR Krishna, DG of Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses Sujan R Chinoy, IIT Kanpur’s Manindra Agarwal , S.P. Shukla, outgoing President SIDM, Larsen and Toubro Defence’s JD Patil, ISRO scientist S Unnikrishnan Nair, and Rasika Chaube, Financial Advisor of MoD.

The terms of reference of the committee, apart from restructuring and redefining its role, incorporates engagement with academia, start-ups and industry for new generation technologies, infuse high-quality manpower with strict performance accountability and weed out non-performers. The panel has also been empowered to recommend modernisation of administrative, personnel and financial systems for quicker development of projects. Rationalisation of laboratory structure is also part of the terms of reference of the committee.

The move comes after Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India came up with a report last December, indicting the DRDO for declaring 20 mission mode projects ‘successful’ despite not achieving their objectives. Businessline had reported that the auditors had taken strong exception to the fact that between January 2010 and December 2019, the DRDO had closed 103 mission mode (MM) projects, undertaken on proven and readily accessible technologies, after incurring an expenditure of ₹2,505.23 crore.

Earlier too, Dr P Rama Rao Committee was constituted to review the functioning of the DRDO. All the recommendations by the Committee were accepted by the DRDO but for creation of a Board of Research for Advanced Defence Sciences (BRADS) to function on the lines of Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of USA.

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