The Union Home Ministry informed a parliamentary panel earlier this week that it couldn’t get qualified IT professionals to fill 35 posts in the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), an ambitious intelligence project conceptualised by the United Progressive Alliance government after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks in 2008.
The panel has asked the Ministry to “re-publicise the posts” and “offer remuneration commensurate with that of the private sector to attract the most qualified professionals.”
The NATGRID is a centralised agency which stores sensitive personal information on citizens, from almost two dozen agencies, to be made available for counter-terror investigations.
ADVERTISEMENT
‘Raise remuneration’
“These posts were not filled because of the non-availability of qualified professionals for various posts in the organisation,” Ministry officials were quoted in the report — Demands for Grants (2017-18) — tabled in Parliament on March 15.
On Friday, CPI(M) MP Mohammad Salim raised the issue in the Lok Sabha and said: “We are known in the world as an IT superpower. Either we are offering less remuneration or we have not advertised enough for these posts. I am not ready to believe that we have not been able to operationalise the NATGRID as we haven’t got skilled IT professionals.”
ADVERTISEMENT
The panel, headed by the Congress leader and former Home Minister P. Chidambaram, had asked the Ministry for the reasons for the cut in the NATGRID’s budget from ₹45 crore to ₹18.71 crore last fiscal. “The 2016-17 budgetary allocation included a provision of ₹11.50 crore under revenue head in connection with the engagment of 35 consultants,” the Ministry said.
The panel pulled up the officials and said: “In a country like India, known worldwide for its highly skilled IT professionals, it is simply not acceptable that the non-availability of professionals was the reason for not filling the 35 posts of consultants. The Committee feels that either the Ministry had failed to publicise the posts widely or the remuneration being offered was not attractive enough. The Committee recommends that the Ministry needs to clear the confusion looming large over the NATGRID’s future by completing the construction of its main building at the earliest.”
In July 2016, the NDA government appointed Ashok Patnaik, a serving officer of the Intelligence Bureau, as the CEO of the NATGRID. The post had been lying vacant after the former CEO Raghu Raman’s contract expired in April 2014. The government refused to renew his contract following an adverse intelligence report.