Meetu Jain 
New Delhi: A quiet battle is brewing between North Block and South Block – between the Union home ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office – and round one has ended in a tie. The tug of war is over the appointment of a new chief of the National Technical Reconnaissance Organisation, helmed at the moment by Arun Sinha, a Kerala cadre Indian Police Service officer.
Sinha, who is on a six-month extension and was to retire on October 31, has got another lease of two months, up to December 31.
The NTRO, India’s technical intelligence wing, reports to the National Security Council headed by national security adviser Ajit Doval in the PMO. But the home ministry headed by Amit Shah has been trying to get a foot in the NSA’s door.
Last month, the PMO returned the file of Central Reserve Police Force chief Anish Dayal Singh, whose candidature was allegedly being pushed by the home ministry and whose appointment was considered a done deal. “The file was returned without a comment so as not to put the differences between the two on record. Now new names will have to be considered afresh,” a source said.
This was round two.
Round one began in September last year when two names were recommended by Doval’s NSC: Manoj Yadava, chief of the Railway Protection Force, and Rashmi Ranjan Swain, who was then special director general, CID, Jammu and Kashmir.
Sources said the home ministry refused to relieve Yadava on the ground that the officer was indispensable. Yadava, a former chief of Haryana police, had moved back on central deputation to the IB after a falling-out with Anil Vij, the state’s home minister at the time.
Swain, a 1991 batch officer of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir cadre who had served for 15 years in RAW, was indispensable too, the home ministry said. The following month, Swain was handed additional charge as director-general of police, Jammu and Kashmir, when Dilbagh Singh retired on October 31. He was confirmed in the post this August and retired last month.
The committee that vets names for the key position comprises the cabinet secretary, a representative each of the NSA, the Research and Analysis Wing, the Intelligence Bureau, the home secretary and secretary, oOPT.
With Doval’s preferred candidates out of the fray, Shah’s home ministry recently pushed the candidature of Anish Dayal Singh. Only to have it blocked by the PMO.
Approved in 2004, in the wake of the 1999 Kargil War, the NTRO is the agency tasked with running India’s technical intelligence capabilities. But the organisation is not viewed to be in great health. A first attempt at auditing an intelligence agency to bring accountability and transparency was initiated by the UPA government in 2010, when the NTRO was audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General. Once the BJP came to power in 2014, nothing much came of the initiative.
Now, sources say, the PMO is looking for a technocrat to turn the agency around. It was decided last year that the NTRO would no longer be a post-retirement sinecure and that a serving officer would be at the helm. Arun Sinha was acting chairman of NTRO for some time before he was made full-time chairman to fulfil administrative requirements. The NTRO chief’s tenure is for five years.
Now the next two months will likely decide who blinks first.
Calls and text messages to Doval, Arun Sinha, and officials of the home ministry and the IB, to seek their response, went unanswered.
This isn’t the first time the home ministry has been in the crosshairs of other ministries. In 2022, the finance ministry dug its heels in against a proposal of the MHA to take control of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act 1985. At present, while the Union home ministry governs the Narcotics Control Bureau, the department of revenue in the finance ministry administers and makes policies under the NDPS Act. The finance ministry said the proposal had not been “thought through” and after much to-and-fro, the move was shelved.