Outsider to head BARC?

The new director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, will be a non-BARC man, according to sources in the Atomic Energy Commission. This is the first time since its inception that BARC would be headed by a person who has not been from the centre’s own scientific community. “But he will definitely from one of the establishments under the Department of Atomic Energy,” said the AEC source.

RK Sinha, the incumbent director, has been elevated as chairman, DAE. He has been asked to hold additional charge of BARC director till a new person is selected by the DAE. Since most of the top BARC scientists are on the verge of retirement, the DAE is in the process of selecting someone from its other establishments. In the past, there was a well defined succession plan in the country’s premier nuclear research centre.

A senior BARC scientist confided that the organisation is in the grip of a leadership vacuum and crisis. “At no time in the past an outsider had to be brought in as director because we had a number of eminent scientists in BARC itself. This is a repercussion of the opting out of intelligent persons from government service to join the corporate world,” he said.

The front runners for the BARC director’s post are Sekar Basu (59), chief executive of the Nuclear Recycle Board, TK Bera (58), head of Rare Materials Project- Mysore, and Dr PD Gupta, director of Raja Ramanna Centre For Advanced Technology, Indore.