Kerala cadre IAS officer Aruna Sundararajan has been appointed Secretary of the ministry while the current Secretary Aruna Sharma has been moved to the ministry of Steel.
The department which has been recently broken away from the ministry of communications and IT and has been designated as an independent ministry handles some marque projects of the Narendra Modi government including Digital India and Aadhaar and plays a key role in others such as Make in India with its push on electronics manufacturing.
Sundararajan, has had past stints in the department as the CEO of the National Common Service Centre (CSC) apart from being administrator of the USO Fund which comes under the department of telecom and is well regarded in the industry for her understanding of the technology domain.
MEIT is currently working on the next version of the CSC scheme expanding their numbers from 1,00,000 earlier to 2,50,000. Sundararajan who will take charge on Monday, has also been IT Secretary of Kerala.
The development also comes after former Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad only retained the department of electronics and IT after the recent cabinet reshuffle while moving to the Law Ministry. Manoj Sinha was made the new Minister of State of Communications (Independent Charge) and given the charge of the two other departments in the ministry, Telecommunications and Posts.
By Baishakhi Dutta