Telecom portfolio split from IT after PM Modi's massive Cabinet reshuffle.
Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha now also holds the Telecom portfolio, that's split from Information Technology, a department that will stay with Ravi Shankar Prasad, who is also the country's new law minister after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's massive reshuffle of his cabinet's portfolios.
For a government that spoke of synergy of work and portfolios, combining finance and corporate affairs, highways, transport and shipping, merging overseas Indian affairs with the external affairs ministry and allocating coal, power, renewable energy and now mines to Piyush Goyal, the split of IT and communications has come as a suprise.
Former Minister of State, IT and Telecom Milind Deora said, "It's strange that ministry of telecommunication and IT has been separated. There are tremendous synergies, coordination between these two departments."
But the government has justified the changes.
Minister of State, Coal, Mines, Renewable Energy, Piyush Goyal told NDTV, "(The) Entire focus of the Narendra Modi cabinet is to make sure we focus on development and for that sometimes you have to merge things and sometimes you need special focus on some."
It was an NDA government under former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee that first thought of merging portfolios, something that was reflected in PM Modi's ministry allocation as soon as he took office.
Experts from the sector feel the change appears more political than organic, done taking a pragmatic view of the sector and its stakeholders that have had very public differences in the recent past over contentious issues like call drops and net neutrality.