For a full 20 months now, the Defence Ministry has been sitting on two crucial recommendations of a committee on reforming defence procurement chaired by former Economic Advisor to the Finance Minister Vijay Kelkar. Not only have these not been made public, there’s been no action on any. It’s not difficult to understand why.

These two recommendations have to do with what is unspeakable at the Defence Research & Development Organisation: the need for an “independent audit” of its abysmal record of delay and waste in virtually all weapons programmes, as reported in the ongoing series in this newspaper.

Numbered 6.19 and 6.20 in the report, accessed by The Indian Express, the Kelkar panel, including scientists, officials of the three service chiefs and industry organisations, said that the Defence R&D Board, the apex review mechanism headed by the DRDO chief, should also include representatives from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

This, the Committee noted, was “in order to enable the Defence R&D Board to draw the expertise and experience from institutions falling outside the purview of defence.”

Second, the Kelkar Committee recommended that DRDO be periodically reviewed “for its functioning” by an independent high level committee and the first such review should be initiated in 2005. The reason: “DRDO has expanded considerably and tried to create in-house research facilities for all defence requirements. This, perhaps, is not a very cost-effective move...DRDO, as a research body has also not been reviewed by an external and independent group of experts”, a process the Kelkar Committee said would compel DRDO to “reform wherever necessary”.

... contd.