Former CSIR chief Girish Sahni passes away

Former CSIR director-general Girish Sahni passed away at 68, known for financial challenges and scientific controversies during his tenure.

Former director-general of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Girish Sahni, passed away August 19 at the age of 68. On X (formerly Twitter), CSIR said it “mourns the sudden loss” in a 5:40 pm post.

Dr. Sahni joined the Institute of Microbial Technology, a CSIR laboratory in Chandigarh, in 1991. He became its director in 2005, a position he held until he was appointed the CSIR director-general in 2015.

His time at the helm of the CSIR was often tumultuous. In 2016, for example, a product called BGR-34 developed by two CSIR labs in Lucknow came under scientists’ scrutiny after Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised its allegedly anti-diabetic effects in a speech. It was being sold at the time by a private entity and bore the CSIR logo. Multiple eminent scientists had questioned CSIR’s “moral, ethical, and public health responsibility” over its lack of scientific testing.

But Dr. Sahni’s time was most marked by financial issues at CSIR. In June 2015, the year he assumed charge, the Union government -- itself 18 months into the new Bharatiya Janata Party rule -- asked CSIR to start paying for half of its expenses in two to three years in a bid to cut spending. Government officials said the move was aimed at guiding CSIR to better serve “national interests”. It also had Dr. Sahni’s full support, who at the time said, “It’s high time Indian scientists rose to the occasion, and not merely published papers to satisfy their natural curiosity.”

Independent scientists flayed the rapid shift to self-financing citing the lack of a funding structure that channelled money from industry for scientific research.

Only two years later, CSIR declared a financial emergency. In 2017, Dr. Sahni had sent a letter to CSIR staffers saying that out of its allocation of Rs 4,063 crore in the 2017-2018 Union Budget, “the balance available for laboratory allocations and various new research projects” after capital costs and salaries and pensions was only Rs 202 crore -- a fraction of the Rs 1,200 crore the organisation had said it needed to fund new research projects.

“The crunch was primarily due to the organisation having to meet the increased salary outgo from recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission and a ₹1,650 crore-hit towards meeting pension requirements,” The Hindu had reported.