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.”

This is precisely what the Committee has now called for, virtually thrusting aside DRDO’s own contention that “accountability cannot be fixed for loss of time in projects”.

The Committee has observed, “Keeping in view the disappointing performance of DRDO, the Committee strongly recommends to the government the complete review of the functioning and structure of DRDO... by appointing an independent committee of experts/professionals, on the lines of AEC and ISRO” and said that DRDO “cannot absolve itself” from the responsibility for inordinate delay.

... contd.