PM Modi shakes the bureaucracy with focus on delivery

PM Modi rejected opposition and bureaucracy's perception that the NDA government is under pressure from coalition politics and afraid to take big decisions

Published on: Aug 16, 2024, 20:53:15 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday carried out a massive administrative rejig in the top echelons of bureaucracy, shuffling at least 20 senior Indian Administrative Services (IAS) officers. The reshuffle comes days after the appointment of Govind Mohan and TV Somanathan as the new home secretary and cabinet secretary respectively.

HT had reported on August 3 that Prime Minister Modi will carry out a transformational change within the bureaucracy this month.

According to the notification issued by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, 1989 Kerala batch IAS officer Rajesh Kumar Singh has been appointed as the next defence secretary, succeeding A Giridhar.

The Centre has appointed Manoj Govil, 1991 batch IAS officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre, as the next secretary at the department of expenditure in the ministry of finance.

Punya Salila Sriavastava, an AGMUT cadre IAS officer of 1993 batch, who is currently a special secretary at Prime Minister's Office, will take over as health secretary as per the notification. On the other hand, 1993 batch IAS officer of Haryana cadre, Deepti Umashankar, will be the new secretary to President Droupadi Murmu.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi carried out a massive administrative rejig in the top echelons of bureaucracy

National Health Authority's chief executive officer (CEO) Deepti Gaur Mukherjee (1993 batch, MP cadre) will be the new secretary at the ministry of corporate affairs. The appointments committee notified that Sanjeev Kumar, a 1993 batch IAS officer of Maharashtra cadre, will be secretary, defence production at the ministry of defence.

Arunish Chawla, a 1992 batch IAS officer of Bihar cadre, has been assigned additional charge as secretary, ministry of culture.

PM Modi rejected Opposition's perception

The bureaucracy and the opposition had thought that the NDA government is under pressure of coalition politics and is afraid to take big decisions. But PM Modi has rejected the perception.

Also, the bureaucracy thought that the prime minister may have lost his mojo after the general election results. But Modi is not missing a single step and firing on all cylinders.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More