DRDO slams ‘faulty’ audit process
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The Defence Research and Development Organisation has gone on the defensive about the much talked about report of an internal audit by the finance wing of the ministry of defence, and has alleged that the audit process is faulty. The audit report alleged that DRDO’s functioning lacked transparency, especially on a grant of Rs 2.8 crore by its chief Dr V.K. Saraswat to the C.R. Rao Advanced Ins-titute of Mathematics, Statistics & Computer Science in Hyderabad, which he heads.
The DRDO has came out in support of Dr Saraswat, maintaining that the aim of the internal audit was to conduct an internal review of MoD wings of the Army, Navy, Air Force, ordnance factories and the DRDO, and not the DRDO alone. DRDO spokesman Ravi Gupta said that these preliminary observations of the audit were not conveyed to the concerned authorities in the DRDO, nor were any replies or clarifications sought or taken from them.
The next level of ‘considering observation as objections if not satisfied with replies’ was also never attained. While the laid down procedure was not followed, the report was compiled and issued without authorisation and was, thus, vitiated. The DRDO will, however, send its response to these observations under ‘confidential classification’ only in due course. The report also says that the DRDO has split or divided project sanctions to avoid seeking approval from competent financial authorities.
“Before seeking replies of executive officials of DRDO, hasty presumption and baseless conclusions appear to have been arrived at,” Dr Gupta said. He said he dou-bted that the draft report was submitted to the competent audit authority for its approval before it was issued to the executive officials.
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