Man about the Home: Why Ajay Bhalla has just got fourth extension

Bhalla had the onerous task of marshalling his resources, which included armed forces and central agencies, to ensure there was no violent uprising in the Valley. He not only managed the situation then, but four years down the line can also boast of having overseen a significant decline in terrorist violence and law and order incidents in Kashmir.

By the end of 2019, he was once again dousing fires that engulfed large parts of the country in the wake of the government enacting the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). While there were protests in the Northeast and large parts of the Hindi belt, New Delhi was singed by communal riots in February 2020.

Barely had this ended that towards late March, Bhalla found himself spearheading the nation’s fight against Covid-19, as the chief nodal authority overseeing the lockdown and setting the agenda for states to fight the disease. As Covid-19 began ebbing away towards the close of 2020, the Home Ministry was saddled with farmers’ protests in Delhi, culminating in violent protests at the Red Fort in early 2021. By mid-year, the second, much deadlier, wave of Covid-19 hit the country.

Bhalla’s string of crises have continued, be it the Centre’s tussle with West Bengal, boundary disputes in the Northeast or the ongoing Manipur conflict.

Among the reasons the government has reposed faith in him for the fourth time, his colleagues say, are his professional competence and his understanding with Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

“Unlike many senior IAS officers, he does not have an inflated ego. He knows he is only an implementer of decisions taken by his minister. He never struts out suggesting that ‘I know better’. He knows that if the minister has taken a decision, it has to be done. But he does his job well. That is why the government likes him,” says a senior bureaucrat.

His colleagues in the ministry describe him as “very effective” and “extremely intelligent”. “He has the ability to grasp complex issues quickly. Being from the Assam-Meghalaya cadre, his understanding of the Northeast is excellent and that is very important in this ministry. He is also very hardworking. You will rarely find pending files on his table at the end of the day,” a Home Ministry official says.

Another official points out that, unlike some of his predecessors, he rarely lets pressure from the political class percolate down to his subordinates. “He never loses his temper, even when he is under tremendous pressure. It shows he has the ability to absorb pressure. He is also a good listener and respects the domain knowledge of his subordinates. It is also the reason he is able to coordinate well with other ministries,” the official says.

A bureaucrat, who has previously worked with the Home Ministry, recalls how he once debated over carrying out an instruction from the top. “I expressed my reservations to the Home Secretary. He did not retort that it has to be done, but understood my point. He asked me to prepare a note and took up the matter with higher authorities,” the official says, adding that it showed that Bhalla was not apprehensive of putting across a different point of view.

Other colleagues in the ministry say he also takes an interest in the personal lives of his subordinates and is empathetic to their problems, helping out in whatever manner possible.

“You may be good or bad, or he may not like you, but he will never be vindictive. He is not interested in ruining careers. He is also not a believer in the Varna system of the civil services where IAS officers believe they alone have all the intelligence because they secured a better rank in an exam,” an IAS officer said.

However, if Bhalla deserves some credit over the government’s gains on the security front in J&K and the Left-wing extremist zones in the country, he must also bear the brunt of the controversies associated with it.

More than four years after the CAA was enacted, the Home Ministry is yet to frame its rules. Despite so much political drum-beating on the National Population Register, the process to update it is yet to start. While the Census was supposed to take place in 2021 and was deferred due to Covid-19, there are no signs of it taking place before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, even though the pandemic is long gone.

The role of the Delhi Police, which comes directly under the Home Ministry, has often been called into question when dealing with cases related to those opposed to the government, particularly by the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party government.

As a bureaucrat during the UPA era, Bhalla had courted controversy when, in March 2013, during a meeting called by then-Union Law Minister Ashwani Kumar, which was attended by CBI Director Ranjit Sinha and Attorney General G E Vahanvati, some changes were made to a draft of the CBI report in the coal scam cases. This report was meant to be seen only by the Supreme Court, but had been routed through Ashwani Kumar, who had to resign in the wake of the controversy. Bhalla, who was a joint secretary in the Ministry of Coal at the time, was a part of the team of officers that made the changes. The Supreme Court had later said the actions had “changed the heart of the report”.

Born to a father who also worked for the government, Bhalla is an MSc (Botany) from Delhi University and an MPhil in social sciences from Panjab University. Prior to being appointed Home Secretary, he was power secretary for more than two years and had stints in the Directorate General of Foreign Trade and the Ministry of Commerce. He has also worked in the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways and served stints in the states of Assam and Meghalaya.

When Lallan Prasad Singh Singh retired, he was rewarded with several gubernatorial stints — in Assam (1973-80), Manipur (1973-80, 1982-83), Meghalaya (1973-80), Nagaland (1973-81), and Tripura (1973-80). He was also conferred a posthumous Padma Vibhushan in 1999. Many in the bureaucracy say that given how useful the government finds him, Bhalla too could get at least one of these honours.