Home Minister Amit Shah empowers his deputies in MHA

New Delhi

In a significant move after taking charge of the North Block a fortnight ago, Home Minister Amit Shah has decided to delegate works of all the 22 divisions of the MHA to his two deputies — G Kishan Reddy and Nityanand Rai, while keeping the reporting of Intelligence Bureau (IB) with him.

Interesting here to note that the divisions dealing with core security issues have been assigned to Reddy, who will look after Jammu and Kashmir, northeast, Union Territories, cyber security and counter-radicalisation.

Rai, the other Minister of State (MoS) in the ministry, has been assigned key political divisions including Centre-state, foreigners’ affairs, the left-wing extremism (LWE) and Police-I (that looks after transfer postings of IPS officers).

He has also been made in-charge of women safety division, which was created last year to focus on safety of women and children.

Besides IB, Shah will look after all decisions involving Cabinet matters and President’s house, officials in the MHA said.

Incidentally, this was for the first time that both the northeast and Jammu and Kashmir divisions have been allocated to the same minister of state.

During NDA’s previous tenure with Rajnath Singh as Home Minister, his deputy Kiren Rijiju looked after the northeast affairs and his colleague Hansraj G Ahir was in-charge of counter-radicalisation and Kashmir.

Sources in the ministry said, the home minister cleared the work allocation order on Tuesday late evening, as the Parliament has been in session and the two of his deputies would be required to answer questions related to the Home Ministry.

The home minister has also asked his deputies with the task of taking presentations from the divisions assigned to them on their functioning.

Shah was given a detailed review regarding the functioning of the MHA on the first day of taking charge at North Block.

Both Rai and Reddy were state presidents of the BJP in Bihar and Telangana respectively. During the Lok Sabha election, they reported to Shah, who is the BJP president.