The Rajesh Kumar Singh extension has been approved by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), which on Saturday gave the Defence Secretary one more year in office. He will now serve until October 31, 2027, or until further orders, whichever is earlier.

His current term was due to end on October 31, 2026.

Rajesh Kumar Singh extension runs to October 31, 2027

The Department of Personnel and Training issued the order on Saturday. It covers Singh's post as Secretary, Department of Defence, Ministry of Defence. He is a 1989-batch IAS officer of the Kerala cadre. The order is signed by Annies Kanmani Joy, Director in the ACC secretariat, and has gone to the Cabinet Secretary, the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister and all Secretaries to the Government of India.

"The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved extension in the service of Shri Rajesh Kumar Singh, IAS (KL:89) as Secretary, Department of Defence, Ministry of Defence, for a period of one year beyond 31.10.2026," the order reads.

The words until further orders are standard in such orders. They allow the government to name a successor at any point within the year.

To clear the Rajesh Kumar Singh extension, the ACC relaxed two service rules: Fundamental Rule 56(d) and Rule 16(1A) of the All India Services (Death-cum-Retirement Benefits) Rules, 1958. Both deal with how long senior officers may serve beyond the normal retirement age of 60. Relaxing them is the route the government uses to keep an officer in a top post past that point. Without it, the Defence Secretary would have retired at the end of this month.

Long tenures in the post are not new. Ajay Kumar served as Defence Secretary from August 2019 to October 2022.

Defence Secretary has also headed DRDO since May

Since late May, Singh has also held additional charge as Secretary, Department of Defence Research and Development (DDR&D), and Chairman of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). He took over those roles from Dr Samir V Kamat.

The research side has kept him busy. In July, DRDO signed two industry contracts for the AEW&C Mk II programme, which will fit an indigenous AEW&C mission system on six A321 aircraft, according to the Ministry of Defence. On July 23, the Defence Secretary monitored the maiden flight test of the Kusha long range surface to air missile from Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Island off Odisha. The missile intercepted an electronic target simulating a high-speed, high-altitude aerial threat, the ministry said.

A year of overseas talks for the Defence Secretary

He has travelled widely this year. He held bilateral meetings at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, co-chaired the 8th India-Japan Defence Policy Dialogue in Tokyo in July, and visited Armenia on August 17 and 18.

New Delhi saw its share too. In September he met Vietnam's Deputy Minister of National Defence, Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Truong Thang. Later that month he received a bipartisan US House delegation