Defence secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh gets one-year extension in Centre's big move
Since May 31 this year, Singh has also held additional charge as secretary, Department of Defence Research and Development, and chairman of the DRDO. | India News
Since May 31 this year, Singh has also held additional charge as secretary, Department of Defence Research and Development, and chairman of the DRDO.
The Narendra Modi government has extended defence secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh's tenure by one more year, until October 31, 2027. Saturday's decision came a week before he was due to complete his two-year fixed tenure on October 31.
Singh, a 1989-batch IAS officer of the Kerala cadre, has been given the unprecedented extension of one year due to his work in promoting "Aatmanirbhar Bharat" in the defence sector and pushing reforms in the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in order to make India more self-reliant.
A quiet yet firm taskmaster, Singh has pushed the defence ministry and the DRDO into speedier decision-making and opening the conventional missile manufacturing into private sector.
He took charge as the 40th defence secretary on November 1, 2024, succeeding Giridhar Aramane. When he was appointed to the post in August 2024, his service was extended beyond superannuation—up to October-end this year.
Since May 31 this year, Singh has also held additional charge as secretary, Department of Defence Research and Development, and chairman of DRDO.
An Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC)'s order in May gave him the charge when Samir V Kamat completed his tenure. Kamat had headed DRDO since August 25, 2022. That arrangement was to last until a regular incumbent was appointed or until further orders. No regular DRDO chief has been named since.
Of Singh's predecessors under the present government, Ajay Kumar and Giridhar Aramane left office on superannuation. RK Mathur and G Mohan Kumar continued beyond their normal retirement age to complete fixed two-year terms. Sanjay Mitra received a three-month extension in 2019, beyond his two-year tenure. None was kept on for as long as Singh now will be.
Before joining the defence ministry, Singh was secretary of the department for promotion of industry and internal trade from April 2023 to August 2024. Before that, he was secretary of the department of animal husbandry and dairying. In the Kerala government, he served as secretary, urban development, and later as finance secretary.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More
