A union home ministry for the 21st century is what the Modi government wants and work has already begun to restructure one of the largest ministries of the central government. The move is in sync with the NDA government's desire to have a lean and effective structure. Interestingly, the finance ministry was reorganised in 2003-04, during the Vajpayee regime.
A three-member committee, headed by a chairman, has been set up by the home ministry under the guidance of Home Minister Rajnath Singh to reorganise and restructure the mammoth ministry which has myriads of processes, departments and agencies under its umbrella.
Top Sources told THE WEEK that the committee to redesign MHA is headed by professor Ajay Shah of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy and has Ashok Mangotra, a former bureaucrat in MHA tasked with border management and former chief of intelligence bureau Dineshwar Sharma as its members.
Former home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi had said at the conference of top police brass of the country, chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this year, that MHA as an organisation is basically a "design of 100 years ago."
"Many of its capacity constraints are rooted in the incompatibility of this design in today's world," he had said, adding, “We need to start design work towards MHA for the 21st century.”
Coming from the finance ministry, Mehrishi had enough ideas about how ministries can be redesigned.
Taking a leaf out of the finance ministry's endeavour, this committee will look at three main things. First, to restructure MHA in a manner that all its departments, especially those housed outside the North Block like Registrar General of India and official languages among others, are working in sync with the ministry's overall policy framework. Secondly, such restructuring should allow speedier implementation of important policy decisions. Thirdly, the new setup must ensure effective monitoring of the government schemes falling under the ambit of the ministry.
The new home secretary, Rajiv Gauba, is now going to lead the effort to ensure the speedy implementation of the task. The first meeting of this committee has already been held last week.
Sources said the takeaway from the meeting is that there will be no bifurcation of the MHA—something that had been done when Rajesh Pilot was MoS (internal security ) under a practice that had been going on since Buta Singh was home minister.
What the home ministry would now do is streamline itself with many divisions being amalgamated and some important ones being created to handle newer concerns such as cyber crime.
The ministry has also roped in the parliamentary consultative committee on home affairs to invite suggestions from lawmakers. The move has been appreciated given the fact that when MHA, under former home minister P. Chidambaram, had tried to undertake a similar task by trying to create a separate centre for counter-terrorism under MHA, the state government's were up in arms accusing the Centre of infringing on the federal structure.
