Security for Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari and Minister of State (PMO) Jitendra Singh has been upgraded to Z-plus category, according to officials in the Ministry of Home Affairs. The move comes four months after the government rejected a demand to upgrade Gadkari’s security from Z to Z-plus. The Maharashtra unit of BJP had made the demand after the death of union minister Gopinath Munde in a car crash in Delhi. Gadkari is the second Cabinet minister to get Z-plus security after Home Minister Rajnath Singh. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has Z category security. All other Cabinet ministers have positional security status, which is Y category. Among the Ministers of State (MoS), Jitendra Singh joins Kiren Rijiju (Home) as the only ones to get Z-plus security. “Jitendra Singh is handling three key portfolios and was active during the J&K elections. An assessment was done and it was found that due to his frequent movement to the state, he had certain threat level,” said a senior ministry official. All these ministers will be given CRPF cover with 40 commandos deployed round the clock for each of them. In the latest security upgration, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh and former chief justice of J&K High Court M M Kumar have been given Z category security. The other Minister of State (Home), Haribhai Parthibhai Chaudhary, has also been given Z category cover.
