PM Narendra Modi divides 77 ministers into 8 groups, tasks them with improving governance

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In a major push for a hands-on approach to governance, the Modi government is planning to rope in young professionals, seek suggestions from retiring officials and make the best use of technology for project monitoring, besides various other steps to be overseen by eight different groups comprising of members from the entire Council of Ministers, sources said.

The 77 ministers have been divided into eight groups to develop technology-based resources, create a pool of professionals for recruiting in their teams and other similar initiatives to be adopted in the offices of all ministers’ offices to bring more transparency and further improve and efficiency of the Modi government, the sources said.

This exercise of dividing the ministers into eight groups was done following ‘Chintan Shivirs’ (brainstorming sessions) of the entire council that were chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with each meeting lasting for nearly five hours.

A total of five such sessions were held – one each on Personal Efficiency, Focused Implementation, Ministry Functioning and Stakeholder Engagement, Party Coordination and Effective Communication and the last one was on Parliamentary practices.

The last brainstorming meeting was also attended by the Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu. All these meetings primarily focused on improving the efficiency and the delivery system of the Modi government. The forming of groups is another step in that direction, broadly focusing on overall improvement in the governance by making ministers more hands-on approach, the sources said.

All the 77 ministers in the council are part of one of these eight groups, each comprising nine to ten ministers with one Union minister designated as a group coordinator, sources said.

Developing a portal in each minister’s office that gives updates on the performance of the Centre’s flagship schemes and policies, a dashboard for monitoring decisions made by the respective ministers and a system to schedule meetings and managing correspondence are among the tasks assigned to these groups.

They have also been asked to create profiles of all districts, states and ministries and develop stakeholder engagement programmes. One of the groups has been assigned to set up a mechanism for creating a team of at least three young professionals with command over research, communication and other key areas, the sources said.

Similarly, a group has been assigned to create a portal that maintains feedback and experiences of the retiring employees, sources said. Union Ministers Hardeep Singh Puri, Narendra Singh Tomar, Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, Smriti Irani, Anurag Thakur are among the ministers who are the coordinators of their respective groups, the sources said.

They have been given this responsibility so that they can share the good practices of their respective offices with other cabinet colleagues. Most of the ministers who had given presentations during the Chintan Shivirs have been given the responsibility of coordinating their respective groups. Meanwhile, for attending these brainstorming sessions, Union ministers on the instruction of Prime Minister Modi did carpooling with their cabinet colleagues from different ministries and hailing from different states.