DRDO chief Avinash Chander sacked to bring in young people: Parrikar

The Union government on Wednesday defended its decision to sack DRDO chief Avinash Chander who was serving on a contract basis, with the Defence Minister saying there was a need for younger people to take over.

“I recommended this. We need someone young and didn’t want somebody on contract to be in such a senior post,” Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar told reporters.

“The proposal went from my side to appoint new person as head of DRDO. I have not yet decided who will head the organisation,” he said.

The minister added that the senior-most official in the organisation would head it for now but they would be looking for someone from the DRDO to head it.

The Appointments Committee of Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi “approved the termination” of the contract of Avinash Chander with effect from 31 January, an official notification said.

Interestingly, Chander who was Secretary, Defence Research and Development cum Director General, DRDO and Scientific Advisor to the Defence Minister, had retired on 30 November last year on attaining 64 years of age and he was given a contract for 18 months till 31 May next year.

NDTV sources have linked the sacking to the government’s displeasure at DRDO’s latest innovation - a battery-controlled silver chariot built with costly materials, for a temple in Maharashtra.

“The chariot has been criticised as a waste of time and money when many other projects such as the Light Combat Aircraft Tejas, Nag missile, long-range surface-to-air missile project and the Airborne Early Warning and Control System projects have been delayed by many years and have seen several cost overruns,” the channel reports on its website.

While a Telegraph report today hinted that Chander may have been shown the door on account of the DRDO’s failure to fall in line with the Prime Minister’s ‘Make in India’ campaign to boost manufacturing in the country, the scientist in the past had said that he supported the participation of private industry in defence equipment manufacturing and believed allowing greater FDI would bring in better technologies.

In an interview to the Indian Express in 2014, Chander had said,“Our aim is that as Make in India enhances further, funding should come from private industry for research and development. So we will look at partnerships.”

The former DRDO chief may have run afoul of the government on account of the accusation that the country’s top defence equipment research organisation was stymieing talent due to a rigid hierarchy that allowed some scientists to keep getting extensions.

Having joined the DRDO in 1972 after his graduation, the organisation credits Chander with having “created the infrastructure, industry base, production lines, and integration facilities to produce different classes of Agni missiles”. The DRDO credited his research in inertial navigation and guidance systems “for enabling the utilisation of solid propulsion”, which is said to be the backbone of the long-range missile system, and also with laying the technology roadmap for Missile Complex Laboratories.

After his appointment, Chander had said that his first priority was to ensure that India could react quickly to a nuclear strike in minutes, and had promised the latest versions of the Agni missile, with a range of over 6,000 kilometres would be inducted in the armed forces’ arsenal by 2015.

With PTI inputs