No move yet to form internal security ministry: Chidambaram
By IANSMonday, February 1, 2010
NEW DELHI - There is no forward movement on a dedicated internal security ministry, Home Minister P. Chidamabaram said Monday about the idea he mooted in December.
The minister said he had decided to create an internal arrangement in the ministry and delegated matters not related to security to his two junior ministerial colleagues — M. Ramachandran and Ajay Maken — till his December idea fructifies.
This leaves the home minister concentrating full time on internal security issues like insurgency in the northeast and Jammu and Kashmir and tackling Maoist problems in tribal-dominated central Indian states.
It is a matter of reorganising the ministry of home affairs. That will be decided by the prime minister. There is no forward movement as such. But I have decided that all work related to non-internal security matters will be allocated to two ministers of state, Chidambaram told reporters while presenting the monthly progress report of his ministry.
He said the arrangement would help him so that I can conserve my time for internal security matters.
Larger issues about reorganising the ministry will be decided by the prime minister at an appropriate time. We have not taken any step forward after my lecture, he said.
Chidambaram had suggested in December that a division of the current functions of the ministry of home affairs was necessary.
“Subjects not directly related to internal security should be dealt with by a separate ministry or should be brought under a separate department in the (home ministry) and dealt with by a minister, more or less independently, without referring every issue to the home minister, he had said while delivering the Intelligence Bureau Centenary Endowment Lecture in New Delhi.
“The home minister should devote the whole of time and energy to matters relating to security, he said.
The home ministry under its jurisdiction has also to deal with issues not related to security which include centre-state relations, disaster management, census and even freedom fighters.
