New Delhi: In 2014, the country’s premier military technology and research organisation DRDO came under fire for building a carbon-fibre chariot for a temple.

The scientists in the Pune lab of DRDO reportedly spent a year from 2012 building the “high-tech” battery-operated god vehicle with taxpayers’ money.

In May 2015, TDP parliamentarian Chamakura Malla Reddy asked the newly elected BJP government, which once rode from political fringes to prominence with a chariot, if DRDO had indeed built a chariot and donated it to the temple. 

He asked Minister of Defence Manohar Parrikar the project's cost, where the funds came from, whether the government had approved the chariot, and what action would be taken if it hadn't.

Parrikar stonewalled the query by stating in the Lok Sabha that the matter was “under inquiry”. He did not officially confirm or deny if the chariot had indeed been built and if it was sanctioned as a donation to the temple by the government. 

The statement was considered an official assurance, requiring the minister to provide details of the investigation within three months.

Part 6 of The Collective’s investigation into government’s assurances shows Parrikar  hid information on the scandal – in which the allegations sat against high officials, one of whom is now a member of the Niti Aayog.  

The Union government later moved to kill the assurance to probe the scandal involving misuse of the country's resources.

THE Juggernaut

The Research & Development Establishment (Engineers) lab in Pune from which the chariot rolled out is one of DRDO’s 60 labs in the country. It designs equipment for the Army’s Corps of Engineers. Its contributions include technologies required to safely clear landmines, and operate in battlefields contaminated by nuclear or chemical weapons.

But the lab has had its flaws and faced criticism that it didn’t have the army’s back. In 2012, the government accounts auditor, CAG, pulled up the lab over its performance. The auditor found that over 80% of projects taken up by the lab worth over Rs 85 crore had failed in the last 15 years. 

In the same year as the publication of CAG report, the lab under its new director S Guruprasad undertook the project to build a chariot for Pune’s Sant Dnyaneshwar temple. Shortly later, another scientist in the lab, D Muthuraj, filed a complaint with the Central Vigilance Commission, alleging DRDO funds were being misused for building a chariot. 

The Ministry of Defence quietly set up a fact-finding committee to probe DRDO’s decision to build the temple chariot. On 5 September 2014, the ministry received a report from the committee, which cleared the DRDO of any wrongdoings. 

The fact-finding committee’s report had justified the defence lab’s chariot project, claiming it would “have been useful for futuristic tasks” of the lab. 

The Reporters’ Collective dug out some details on the report, which was never made public, from a tribunal. 

The committee, quite incredulously,  claimed: The chariot had been developed “for realising advanced technology under Corporate Social Responsibility of DRDO”.

The committee’s report concluded that the project had indeed been initiated on the orders of DRDO Director General and then scientific advisor to the Union Minister for Defence, VK Saraswat.  

The temple had requested Saraswat, it was recorded,  to develop a “steerable electrically-driven chassis” for a chariot.

The whitewash was crude: The cost was small and it was all for a high-tech future of the defence forces, the committee seemed to conclude by calculating that the year-long project where scientists of the government had been deployed cost a mere Rs 17.60 lakh plus taxes. 

A day after the committee submitted the report, on 6 September 2014, Muthuraj, aggrieved by the whitewash, approached the Bombay High Court. He alleged the corruption was real and he was being victimised by the government for blowing the whistle. 

The ministry used the secretive fact-finding committee’s report before the high court to claim no wrong had been done. The case was still ongoing when a year later, in 2015, a parliamentarian asked about DRDO’s chariot project. Then Minister of Defence Parrikar told Parliament that his ministry would investigate the matter. 

His ministry was well aware of the internal fact-finding committee, its findings, allegations of victimisation of the whistleblower and the on-going case in the Bombay High Court, but Parrikar hid these facts from Parliament. 

We can’t say if it was triggered by the question in Parliament or not, but by September 2016, the ministry of defence had begun disciplinary proceedings – not against the DG of DRDO and minister’s special advisor Saraswat, but against another scientist junior to Saraswat, lab director S Guruprasad. 

The charge against Guruprasad was not that he had wrongfully built the chariot using government resources but he had done his accounts wrong – he had billed it under the CSR accounts head of DRDO. In effect, the project was justified, the sanction by Saraswat was justified. 

Skeletons TUmble

In 2017 Guruprasad went to the Central Administrative Tribunal against the government’s accusations and a denial of promotion subsequent to the accusations.

The tribunal is the judicial body to resolve disputes related to Union government’s employee recruitment and service conditions.

In his affidavit, Guruprasad said the then Scientific Advisor to the Defence Minister and Director General of DRDO, VK Saraswat, instructed him to build the chariot in July 2012.

The records of the hearings at the tribunal revealed the Ministry of Defence’s flip-flops – the ministry that defended the Pune Lab Director in Bombay High Court, later set out to punish the scientist, not for building the chariot but for where he claimed to have drawn the money from for the project.

At the tribunal hearing, the ministry, contrary to what its fact-finding committee found earlier and what it had told the high court, stated that neither was there any precedent nor any provision for undertaking CSR work in DRDO. It stated that Guruprasad had violated government procedures and had not sought approval for the project from the competent authorities.

The tribunal in its final judgement sided with Guruprasad. It affirmed, the chariot work had been assigned by the Director General of DRDO. It also concluded that Guruprasad could not be disciplined for the project because if he had disobeyed the orders of the Director General it would have been a case of insubordination.

The tribunal said the disciplinary action against Guruprasad had been taken only because of the change in perception towards him by “some unknown and invisible person in the organisation.” 

Guruprasad was acquitted of the charge of bad accounting practice. 

The Union government continued to keep Parliament in the dark about the twists and turns in the story. In November 2020, five years after first promising to investigate the scandal, the government asked the assurance be dropped as no one had been found guilty.

Everyone got a clean chit while Parliament and citizens were kept in the dark regarding why DRDO undertook a religious project, blowing tax money.

THE OTHER ^BROKEN PROMISES