In a quiet and subtle shift in the way in which bureaucrats are being appointed by the NDA regime in the Union home ministry, it is no longer the Indian Administrative Service officers who will come on deputation to the Ministry. The MHA has opened up its doors for all services-Central Secretariat Service (CSS), Indian Defence Account Service, Revenue, Indian police Service, Income Tax , Railways and so on.
In the nth reshuffle, the orders of which were issued on Friday, the home ministry has made changes in six divisions where new faces have taken over and those holding charges of some divisions have been shifted to new responsibilities. What has become clear with the new reshuffle in the home ministry is the fact that there is a thinking at the highest level that it should no longer only be the IAS officers who should handle the sensitive divisions of the ministry but allow a mix of all bureaucrats with experience in different fields to come together to run the ministry.
The ministry has the mammoth task of handling all kinds of issues ranging from internal security of the country to freedom fighters and centre-state relations.
In the latest re-shuffle of joint secretaries, Sanjeev Kumar Jindal , a CSS officer, has been given charge of the Disaster Management division on joining the MHA; Ajay Ramesh Sule, a 1993 batch IDAS officer has been moved from the border management division to the Internal Security- II division. R.K Mitra, a CSS officer holding charge of the judicial division has been given additional charge of Police-II division, which takes care of the deployment of central paramilitary forces while another CSS officer Bina Prasad who was holding charge of IS-III division has also been given charge of the freedom fighters division.
Another CSS officer—Saheli Ghosh Roy has joined the MHA as a joint secretary and is being given the charge of Coordination and Public grievances and the International Cooperation Division which was recently chalked out to exclusively take care of international treaties. Meanwhile, IAS officer of Nagaland cadre, V. Shashank Shekhar has been shifted for the third time in the ministry—this time from the Police -II division to the border management-II division. He had earlier served in the freedom fighters division among others in the last few years.
With the fresh reshuffle, the MHA has also completed the process of filling up its vacancies in the posts of the joint secretary and additional secretary—the top posts for bureaucrats coming from other departments of the central government as well as the states.
It was in October 2014—the year in which the NDA government came to power—that a major reshuffle was affected in the home ministry, followed by new appointments and changes in the coming months—November 2015, February 2016, November 2016 and so on.
