EN
It is known that the existence of the group inverse a # of a ring element a is equivalent to the invertibility of a 2 a − + 1 − aa −, independently of the choice of the von Neumann inverse a − of a. In this paper, we relate the Drazin index of a to the Drazin index of a 2 a − + 1 − aa −. We give an alternative characterization when considering matrices over an algebraically closed field. We close with some questions and remarks.