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The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has issued a 14-point rejoinder to certain sections of the media leaking details about an internal audit report pertaining to the Ministry of Defence (MoD). In its rejoinder, the DRDO said that it could not understand how a confidential document pertaining to the MoD reached public domain in total violation of laid down orders on handling of such documents. It said that the response to the audit authorities by DRDO is being similarly rendered under confidential classification only. It said that theoriginal objective of the internal audit was to conduct an internal review of the wings of the MoD namely, Army, Navy, Air Force , Ordnance factories and DRDO. It said that since laid down procedures were not followed, and the report was issued without authorization, the matter is under examination and correspondence with the concerned authorities. It said that in the normal course, the internal audit observations are settled by clarifications from the concerned department. "Such preliminary observations are required to be formally issued and replies to the same should be sought prior to compilation of any report. Only if the replies are not satisfactory is the next step of making a preliminary report taken. In the extant case, the laid down procedure was not followed and to that extent, the process of audit stands vitiated. Thus, even before seeking replies of DRDO, presumption and baseless conclusions appear to have been arrived at," the DRDO release said. It said that the draft report, as per procedure, is also required to be submitted to the competent (audit) authority for its approval before it is issued to the executive authorities. This also does not appear to have been done. It further revealed that the observations are apparently based on individual perceptions and hasty presumptions rather than facts and are a curious mix of fact and fiction issued without seeking the formal replies of the executive authorities. In several instances, the statements have taken the shape of undue criticism and derogatory remarks. The DRDO said that it strongly refutes observations made in the report and is in the process of compiling its responses despite the fact that the findings of audit already stand vitiated. The replies to audit will be sent in due course as per procedure, it added. The DRDO said that it is committed to the cause of indigenous development of state of the art weapon systems for the Indian Armed Forces with total focus on transparency, probity and accountability. It described as unfortunate the perverse campaign that has been launched, especially when the DRDO is making rapid strides into high end defence technologies and indigenously churning out one after another, contemporary weapon systems and equipment, sharply reducing the dependence on imports, the efforts have helped India to raise the level of indigenous content in meeting its requirements of defence systems to around 60 percent; the figures are rising steadily. Thus, anyone can easily guess, who will be the beneficiary’s this campaign and who is going to loose.

DRDO's 14-point rejoinder on internal audit report leak