With Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government enters the final lap of its first term, it has set in motion a series of moves to streamline and synergise national security architecture. One of these has been the new appointments to the National Security Council Secretariat, which functions mainly as the office of the National Security Advisor (NSA). There are now three deputy national security advisors instead of just one, while the post of military advisor has been revived. Apart from this, the Strategic Policy Group, which had gone into disuse even during the UPA-2, has also been revived, but with one important difference. Instead of the Cabinet Secretary chairing the body, it is now the NSA who will preside. Several other moves, including the setting up of a Defence Planning Committee, again headed by the NSA, and a revived Advisory Board, also reporting to him, has been criticised as conferring too much power in a single office. With NSA Ajit Doval, one of India’s best intelligence officers, presiding over most of the strategic committees on security and defence, Prime Minister Modi has shown that he has much faith in Doval.

It may be noted that the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS), which is headed by the NSA, was set up following the 1998 nuclear tests by the then Bharatiya Janata Party government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Following the tests there was an understanding within the top political leadership that as a de-facto nuclear power, India would need greater emphasis on its security needs and compulsions. The NSCS was set up six months later and was meant to sit at the apex of the national security architecture, to ensure coordination between ministries and unity of purpose across government in matters of national security.

The NSCS was viewed as a body that would take a holistic view of national security issues based on the advice and specialist studies done by its constituent bodies, but the executive action on them would remain the purview of the Cabinet Committee on Security. The fact that the two bodies had a common membership helped the decision-making process. Now with Doval, presiding over the NSCS, it will have more teeth and power.