DRDO opposes it but House panel underlines: you need outside audit

The report is scheduled to be tabled in the Budget session of Parliament.

In the report, compiled after detailed testimonies from the military top brass and independent experts over several months, the Standing Committee, chaired by Balasahib Vikhe Patil, has observed, “There is no scientific audit of DRDO projects as such. However, the DRDO has mechanism of feasibility study, design and technology evaluation, project peer review. The Committee observe that inspite of that, a large number of projects are showing inordinate delay and escalation of huge cost. The Committee therefore recommends that in addition to existing audit system, DRDO’s projects must also be audited by external and independent audit group of experts duly approved by the Government of India.”

In just 12 of the DRDO’s most critical projects — involving systems that the armed forces need more than any other, like missiles, fighters and theatre artillery — the organisation has exceeded sanctioned estimates by Rs 6, 013.43 crore in just the last 10 years, a figure greater than its current annual budget.

This recommendation comes after the Committee conducted a thorough review recently of the country’s most crucial defence programmes, including the integrated guided missile development programme (IGMDP), the Light Combat Aircraft, the Arjun main battle tank, the Kaveri jet engine and concurrent engineering.

On November 16, as part of an investigative series on the DRDO’s delay and mismanagement, The Indian Express had reported on how the Defence Ministry had failed to act on a crucial point raised by the Vijay Kelkar committee, recommending that DRDO’s functioning as a research body needed to be under the purview of a panel of independent experts.

In fact, on the day before the report was published, Comptroller & Auditor General (C&AG) VN Kaul said at a defence economics seminar, “Defence R&D is an area where accountability often takes shelter under the policy of self reliance, and indigenization becomes a reason for delay... accountability of domestic R&D organizations needs to be re-emphasized to enable better assessment of return from investment. Sensitizing of the defence services to the role of public audit is essential.”

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