New Delhi: A significant change in the Centre’s working, on the lines of the “Gujarat model”, is almost complete now, with the bureaucracy getting primacy over ministers, and the PMO with its troika of top bureaucrats — principal secretaries Nripendra Misra and P.K. Mishra and Cabinet Secretary Ajit Kumar Seth — becoming the centrepoint of governance.
Principal secretaries Nripendra Misra and P.K. Mishra and Cabinet Secretary Ajit Kumar Seth
With the PM’s two principal secretaries and the Cabinet Secretary at the pinnacle of Narendra Modi’s governance model, all secretaries in finance, infrastructure and energy ministries have emerged as its crucial pillars.
Besides the finance and transport ministers, Arun Jaitley and Nitin Gadkari respectively, none of the other ministers have field experience in the areas assigned to them.
Therefore, sources close to decision-making process in the present dispensation say, the Prime Minister has allowed the secretaries heading the commerce and energy ministries, as well as the department of investment promotion, to have direct access to him.
They include DIPP secretary Amitabh Kant, commerce secretary Rajeev Kher, petroleum and natural gas secretary Saurabh Chandra, who is likely to take over as Cabinet Secretary after Mr Seth retires later this year, environment secretary V. Rajagopalan, power secretary Pradeep K. Sinha, coal secretary S.K. Srivastava and renewable energy secretary Upendra Tripathi.
