RK Mathur takes over as defence secretary

New Delhi: Senior IAS officer Radha Krishna Mathur was today appointed defence secretary to succeed Shashikant Sharma who has taken over as Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). “RK Mathur was today appointed as the defence secretary,” a ministry official said in New Delhi.[caption id=“attachment_813435” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Defence Secretary RK Mathur. Image courtesy PIB [/caption] A 1977-batch IAS officer of Manipur-Tripura cadre, Mathur was serving as secretary (defence production) in the defence ministry. As defence secretary, he will have a tenure of two years from the date of joining office. An old hand in the ministry, Mathur served as additional secretary and special secretary in department of defence from September 2008 to October 2011. Born on 25 November 1953, he did his BTech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kanpur and MTech in Industrial Engineering from IIT, Delhi. He also holds a Master in Business Administration from ICPE, Slovenia. From 2000 till August, 2008, he served in Tripura in various departments as principal secretary and later as chief secretary. As secretary (defence production), Mathur has been involved in modernisation process of the defence public sector undertakings and Ordnance Factories under his department. He was instrumental in proposing changes in the Defence Procurement Procedures for making acquisition process more transparent and enhancing indigenisation of defence production. PTI