New Delhi: Union Minister of State Ajay Kumar Mishra, who is facing the heat after his son was accused of murder and rioting in the Lakhimpur Kheri incident, looks after six important divisions and one department in the home ministry.
Mishra was brought into the Narendra Modi ministry in the July reshuffle this year.
The six divisions are — Women Safety, Administration, Cyber and Information Security (C&IS), Finance, Coordination and International Cooperation, and Freedom Fighters and Rehabilitation.
Besides these, Mishra is also in charge of the Department of Official Languages, that deals with the implementation of the provisions of the Constitution relating to official languages and the provisions of the Official Languages Act, 1963.
“Mishra certainly is in charge of several important divisions, but before he takes any decision, it has to be cleared by the senior Minister of State (Home), which is Nityanand Rai. All the files go through Rai,” a senior ministry official told ThePrint.
What the divisions do
The Administration division is responsible for handling all administrative matters including allocation of work among various divisions of the ministry, monitoring of compliance of giving information under the Right to Information Act, and matters relating to Secretariat Security Organisation and Parliamentary Matters.
The C&IS division deals with matters relating to cyber security and cyber crime.
The Women Safety division is responsible for policy formulation, planning, coordinating, formulating and implementing projects and schemes to assist states and union territories to achieve the objective of instilling “greater sense of security among women”. According to the website of Ministry of Home Affairs, this division also deals with prison reforms, and operations against human trafficking.
The Finance division is responsible for formulating, operating and controlling the budget of the home ministry under the Integrated Finance Scheme.
The Coordination and International Cooperation division deals with intra-ministry coordination work, public grievances, custody of classified and non-classified records of the ministry, furnishing of various reports on SCs/STs and Persons with Disabilities, among other things.
The Freedom Fighters and Rehabilitation Division implements the freedom fighters’ pension scheme and the schemes for rehabilitation of migrants from former West Pakistan, East Pakistan, and the provision of relief to Sri Lankan and Tibetan refugees. It also handles work relating to enemy properties and residual work relating to evacuee properties.
(Edited by Neha Mahajan)
Also read: MoS Ajay Mishra — Lakhimpur Kheri strongman, murder accused, who ‘delivers justice on the spot’