How govt arrived at IPS officer Rajesh Arya's name to head NTRO

A preliminary probe led the NTRO brass to believe the breach took place in the Bhopal office of the agency. Immediately, the intranet was shut down, cutting off the agency headquarters in the national capital from its units scattered across the country’s far-flung areas.

Shocking breach

The intranet breach was a shocking development for two reasons – one, being an intelligence agency, the NTRO goes to great lengths to keep its computer systems secure; two, the intranet is meant to connect only in-house computer systems and outsiders cannot access it but the breach did happen. This left the government cyber security experts with many unanswered questions.

Interestingly, the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC), which is designated as the national nodal agency to protect critical information infrastructure, is a unit of NTRO.

What ails NTRO

The breach is symptomatic of what afflicts the NTRO since its establishment in 2003.

This story is based on accounts shared by at least half-a-dozen current and former officials. All of them spoke to The Federal on the condition of anonymity.

Also read: Who is Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel, who could become the next CIA director?

Critically, since its inception, the agency has struggled to find organisational cohesiveness and has remained a battlefield between scientists and police officials who came to dominate the agency in the later years.

For example, its chiefs have come from varied backgrounds – two were scientists from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), another scientist came with a background of having worked in the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, at least four had worked in the external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) and one came with a previous experience of working for a domestic intelligence agency, the Intelligence Bureau (IB).

And, all of them were retired from their respective services when they took charge as the NTRO chief.

Repurposing of work

It was during the tenure of Alok Joshi, who headed R&AW before becoming NTRO chief in 2015, the agency started to repurpose its work more in tune with the requirements of its client organisations such as the R&AW and the IB.

SC Jha, who succeeded Joshi, further strengthened the NTRO and ensured that it became an intelligence gathering agency using technical resources, and not a platform to develop scientific projects. Before Joshi and Jha, the mandate of NTRO wasn’t even clear to its workforce.

During their time, clarity was brought in that NTRO officials are intel officers and their job is to gather intelligence using only technical means.

Unresolved issues

But still, NTRO's issues, unresolved since its inception, continued to rear their heads. Jha dealt with them with a much-required iron hand.

Officials who had joined the agency in the early years but were later found to be unfit for intelligence work were ousted. Help from the private sector was sought to make the agency a unique blend of private-public partnership in order to get required resources – human and technical.

Moreover, for 15 long years after its establishment, the agency was kept out of the purview of the Intelligence Act. Under the Act, employees of select outfits cannot form unions or associations or communicate with the press or publish a book without prior permission from the respective organisation's chief. The government plugged the gaping hole only in 2018.

While Joshi and Jha brought much required clarity to the agency’s direction, the issue of organisational cohesiveness remains an elusive goal.

Also read: SEBI chief: Govt seeks ‘high-Integrity’ leader to replace Madhabi Buch

Scientists excluded

As working officers as well as retired persons from IPS came to dominate the agency in later years, its employees from the scientist cadre started feeling constricted. They also felt that their promotional avenues had been curtailed.

Initially, there were two advisors under the NTRO chairman – designated as advisor (scientist) and advisor (intelligence). But this practice is now not being followed.

Even now, the agency is in dire need of capable officers. Many of its crucial centres have been working without full-time directors. It also needs to ramp up its capabilities immediately.

After the Sino-Indian Galwan clash of 2020, the NTRO had to hire the services of a private satellite provider for real-time images of the area around the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which demarcates the boundary between India and China.

Technical expertise

In this backdrop, when the time to pick a new chief of the agency came last year, the government deliberated hard over many names.

Sources told The Federal that Prime Minister Narendra Modi made it clear he wanted an officer who could understand the technical aspects of the job. Hence, the choice was narrowed down to the 1994 batch Rajasthan cadre IPS officer Rajesh Kumar Arya, who holds a master’s degree in technology and was part of the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS), under National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval. He was named NTRO head early last month.

Before Arya, the names of seasoned and capable police officers like Manoj Yadava (chief of Railway Protection Force with a long prior stint in IB); AD Singh (who then headed paramilitary CRPF and has now retired and again had a long stint in IB) and RR Swain (long tenure in R&AW before retiring as J&K police chief) were considered.

Rumours of rift

But deliberations in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) veered around picking up an officer with a tech background. The delay in finding a full-time NTRO chief led to rumours of a rift between the top echelons of the government, with Union Home Minister Amit Shah and NSA Doval favouring different candidates.

But sources said it was Modi who insisted on an officer with a tech background for the job.

An officer speaking on the condition of anonymity said: “The government initially even thought of bringing in an outsider with a tech background for the job, but then it thought it was better to appoint an officer with experience of intelligence work and who also knew technology.”

“Arvind Kumar, a 1993 batch IPS officer of Bihar cadre, was also in contention. He had served in the Intelligence Bureau and is also an engineer by education but, finally, the government selected Arya,” the officer added.

Serving IPS officer

Arya is a serving IPS officer, unlike his predecessors who came to head the agency after retirement. Unless shifted out of the NTRO, Arya can have a long tenure, up to January 31, 2028, his retirement date.

He has enough time at his disposal to bring in long-term structural changes in the agency, to make it align with the country’s technical intelligence-gathering requirements.

To appoint Arya, the government had to downgrade the NTRO’s chairman’s post to the level of Additional Secretary to the government, as he is yet to be empanelled to hold a secretary level post.