DRDO financial powers reset under DFP-2026 as Rajnath Singh clears strategic R&D overhaul

DRDO financial powers were reset on June 29, 2026, when Defence Minister Rajnath Singh released the Delegation of Financial Powers to DRDO, known as DFP-2026, at a function in New Delhi. The framework is pitched as a reform to lift efficiency, accountability and the timely execution of strategic research and development projects.

The headline promise is speed. Singh said the revised powers would let the systems, platforms and technologies coming out of the country's defence R&D ecosystem reach the armed forces faster.

He tied the move to the wider self-reliance push. Stronger collaboration with industry and academia, the Defence Minister said, would reinforce the vision of Aatmanirbhar Bharat, deepen self-reliance in defence technologies and harden the nation's defence preparedness.

What DRDO financial powers change under DFP-2026

The reform is about who can sanction what, and how quickly. DFP-2026 raises functional empowerment at several levels inside the Department of Defence R&D, the arm of the Ministry of Defence under which DRDO operates, and that empowerment is the lever the government expects to do the real work of shaving months off the path from sanction to delivery.

Three changes stand out. The framework carves out dedicated financial provisions for trial campaigns, tests and evaluation activities, the stage at which prototypes are proven and where delays have historically piled up. It grants authorisation for sanctioning pre-project R&D initiatives, the early exploratory work that runs before a programme is formally sanctioned. And it draws a clear line between the financial powers governing different grants-in-aid streams.

The funding streams DFP-2026 separates

That segregation matters most for three channels. Extra-Mural Research projects, which fund academic and institutional work, now sit under their own schedule. So do the Defence Innovation Accelerator-Centres of Excellence and the Technology Development Fund, which backs private industry, MSMEs and start-ups.

Why the timing of the R&D reform reads as deliberate

India has spent the better part of a decade trying to compress the gap between a working prototype and a fielded system. The complaint from the services has rarely been about the science. It has been about the wait, the trials, the evaluations and the sanctions that sit between a lab result and an inducted weapon.

DFP-2026 aims squarely there. By pushing sanctioning authority lower and ring-fencing money for trials and pre-project work, the framework tries to strip out the procedural friction that turns a finished design into a queued one.

The DRDO posted the announcement on its official handle, crediting the Defence Minister with releasing the framework at the New Delhi event.



Who was in the room

Chief of Defence Staff General NS Raja Subramani attended the release. Gen Raja Subramani was joined by Defence Secretary and Secretary, Department of Defence R&D, and Chairman DRDO Rajesh Kumar Singh, whose office now carries the dual brief over the department and the organisation it funds.

The room also held Secretary (Defence Production) Sanjeev Kumar, Secretary (Ex-Servicemen Welfare) Sukriti Likhi and Controller General of Defence Accounts Anugraha Narayana Das, whose audit machinery the new financial powers will run through. From DRDO came Director General (Naval Systems and Materials) RV Hara Prasad, Director General (Resources and Management) Dr Ravindra Singh and Director, Directorate of Finance and Material Management, Dr Maiya Din, alongside other senior officials.

Where DFP-2026 fits in the indigenisation push

The reform lands in a year already thick with indigenisation milestones, from the DRDO Netra AEW&C reaching full operational clearance with the IAF to a steady run of DRDO contracting, including the recent award to Avantel for GSAT-32 satellite terminals. The financial plumbing behind those programmes is what DFP-2026 sets out to rework.

It also fits a year of the Defence Minister working both ends, from groundbreakings on the defence-industrial side at Nagpur to today's release in the capital. The text runs to the schedules. The intent, on the government's telling, is plainer: get Indian-made systems to Indian forces faster.

The release was issued by the Ministry of Defence through the Press Information Bureau, with DRDO functioning under the Department of Defence R&D within the Ministry of Defence.