Union Home Minister Amit Shah might have faced a predicament when it came to work allocation among his three junior ministers after the major cabinet overhaul on July 7. Shah has chosen to rest the larger share of responsibility on the shoulders of minister of state Nityanand Rai and allocated the least amount of work to junior most minister, 35-year-old Nisith Pramanik. The home ministry presently has three ministers of state—Nityanand Rai, Ajay Kumar Mishra and Nisith Pramanik.
Incidentally, a week after the appointment of the two new MoS in the home ministry, Mishra and Pramanik, the MHA website shows Shah flanked by Rai and Mishra, whose profiles are mentioned but little is reflected on the website about Pramanik. Ministry sources said the website is not maintained by the MHA and the National Informatics Centre has to update it.
In the new set up, Rai might not have got an elevation in rank but has certainly got an elevation in the work allotment by Shah, after his ministerial colleague and former junior minister G. Kishan Reddy was elevated to Cabinet rank.
Rai is also the most experienced hand among the three MoS having continued in the post in the home ministry under Shah. He has been given maximum work allocation with at least 13 divisions, the most crucial ones being internal security, Jammu Kashmir and Ladakh Affairs, counter terrorism and counter radicalisation, centre-state relations, foreigners, border management, police modernization, disaster management and left wing extremism .
Mishra (60), who is a Lok Sabha MP from Kheri in Uttar Pradesh, has been given around eight divisions. These include cyber and information security, freedom fighters and rehabilitation, official language, administration and coordination. Mishra started his political career as a BJP district general secretary and became a Member of Parliament in 2014. His appointment in the MHA comes at a time when assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh are due next year.
Shah, himself, will be looking after all major issues related to insurgency affected areas and constitutional matters. This largely includes developments in the newly carved out Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh and the insurgency affected states of northeast. The latest internal order of the MHA says that all such crucial matters can be put up directly to the home minister.
It is not the first time the ministry has three MoS, said an MHA official. There were three junior ministers in the first term of the UPA government. But it seems to be the first time when one MoS will share work with another MoS.
In the ministerial work allocation, the least amount of work has been delegated to Pramanik for now. Pramanik has been allocated the official language and border management divisions, to work in close coordination with Rai and Mishra who are also handling the same divisions. It appears Pramanik will be learning the ropes in the expansive ministry before he handles a larger chunk.
A former teacher of a primary school, 35-year-old Parmanik is a Lok Sabha MP from Cooch Behar constituency in West Bengal. Presently, he is the youngest member in the Union council of ministers but his importance can be gauged from the fact that he was among the four MPs from West Bengal to be inducted into the council of ministers by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The MHA is handling matters related to post poll violence in West Bengal.
The Union home ministry is the most expansive ministry in the central government with 21 divisions and six departments. It has a workload that cuts across jurisdictions of several ministries besides discharging its main function of maintaining the federal polity through close coordination with state governments on almost all matters related to internal security.
While the MHA has not officially disclosed the division of work among the three ministers of state, the allocation has been made internally to put the junior ministers on the fast pedal.
