Rajnath Singh forms committee to overhaul Ministry of Home Affairs

NEW DELHI: The government has formed a committee under former home secretary Madhukar Gupta’s chairmanship to “review the organisation, structure and processes” of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to meet the growing internal security challenges.

The need for a comprehensive review of the ministry stemmed from the realisation that it needs to take more policy initiatives on national security, policing and law-and-order issues, said a ministry official on the condition of anonymity.

MHA’s January 8 order entrusted Gupta with the task of heading the committee. The Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D), which would assist the new panel, also wants to engage CRPF’s former special director general Rakesh Jaruhar as “consultant” to Gupta.


Madhukar Gupta, a 1971-batch IAS officer of Uttarakhand cadre, confirmed to ET about his new assignment, but insisted that he was “in no position to interact on what the ministry expects” from the committee.

When asked whether governments in the past ever attempted a similar step, Gupta stated: “I don’t recall an exercise parallel to the latest move.” One of the tasks with the committee, said a government source, is to rationalise the work of home secretary, special secretaries, joint secretaries and other officers, who are mostly seen fire-fighting issues confronting the ministry.

“It’s a happy development that the MHA has decided to focus on the fundamentals of security and policy by forming a committee to restructure the ministry. I hope the ministry will implement the committee report since core corrections were overdue,” former BPR&D DG MC Bonwankar said. Union home minister Rajnath Singh has been taking steps to finetune MHA’s functioning with contemporary demands, such as establishing cyber and information security division to deal with online security threats and crimes.

The MHA has over the years segregated its work through 13 divisions: border management division, centre state division, coordination division, disaster management division, foreigners’ division, internal security division-II, internal security division-III, Jammu and Kashmir division, judicial division, Left-wing extremism division, police division-I, police division-II and Union territories division.

As early as last month, J&K governor NN Vohra during a closed-door address at RAW’s raising day had argued in favour of a national security policy and a separate ministry to tackle such matters.

Former Union home minister P Chidambaram, however, had suggested bifurcation of the home ministry way back in 2009, to focus on mounting internal security challenges.