DRDO gets more financial powers

Continuing with its drive to give more financial powers to senior officials, the Defence Ministry on Wednesday enhanced the sanction authority of various heads of crucial Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). Earlier, the financial powers of Vice-Chiefs of three Services were enhanced to reduce time taken in decision making and sustain modernisation drive besides operational efficiency.

As regards DRDO, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman delegated more powers to Secretary, Defence R&D to sanction projects, procurements and enhanced his powers from Rs 75 crore to Rs 150 Crore and for the Directors General (DG) it was increased from Rs 50 crore to Rs 75 crore. Similarly, for Proprietary Article Certificate (PAC) cases were increased from Rs 50 crore to Rs 150 Crore for Secretary Defence (R&D), officials said.

The powers of Director General (DG) have been enhanced from Rs 3 crore to Rs 5 crore for sanctioning research projects to Universities, Technological Institutions and to Indigenous Defence Industry under the Technology Development Fund Scheme of DRDO.

The Director Generals of DRDO has expressed their satisfaction at this major initiative by the Government and have opined that these forward-looking measures would ensure that majority of the decisions relating to implementation and functioning would largely be taken within the technology clusters whereas policy issues would primarily come to the Government. Given the geographically dispersed clusters and laboratories, this will greatly reduce file movements to and from the DRDO Headquarters, New Delhi and facilitate faster decision-making.