Parrikar to separate roles of DRDO chief and scientific advisor
Defence minister Manohar Parrikar has decided to bifurcate the job of secretary (Defence Research and Development Organisation) and scientific advisor (SA) to the minister with the latter now expected to oversee research and development and push the DRDO to a world class level for military technologies.
Defence minister Manohar Parrikar has decided to bifurcate the job of secretary (Defence Research and Development Organisation) and scientific advisor (SA) to the minister with the latter now expected to oversee research and development and push the DRDO to a world class level for military technologies.
Manohar-Parrikar
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Former DRDO secretary Chander, who 11th SA to the Raksha Mantri, demitted office on January 31, 2015. South Block sources said while Parrikar has short-listed a panel of around eight young defence scientists for the DRDO job, he plans to bring in an advisor who will be tasked to advise him on the technological and hardware requirements of the armed forces as well as to help enhance technologies for the DRDO laboratories.
“How can SA to RM and DRDO chief be the same person? The job of the former was to keep an eye on the latter working. This is perhaps why the DRDO has lagged behind in developing world class defence technologies and all its major programmes are behind schedule,” said a senior official.
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While Parrikar is currently informally advised by retired military officials on requirements of the armed forces, the 12th SA is expected to review the working of the DRDO and fix accountability and time-lines on development of critical technologies. The next DRDO chief will be one of the defence ministry secretaries with three other secretaries as his colleagues.
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While Parrikar is currently informally advised by retired military officials on requirements of the armed forces, the 12th SA is expected to review the working of the DRDO and fix accountability and time-lines on development of critical technologies. The next DRDO chief will be one of the defence ministry secretaries with three other secretaries as his colleagues.
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With PM Narendra Modi’s Make in India centred around defence technologies, future focus will be on DRDO labs developing exportable technologies for hardware production by defence public sector undertaking and Indian companies in joint venture with global defence contractors.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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