New Delhi: Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has come up with a portal e-Sahaj for grant of security clearance. The portal will facilitate an applicant to submit application online and also to view the status of his application from time to time.
Launching the portal, the Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba said that with the introduction of online portal, the process has become standardized, resulting in a process which will be faster, transparent and easy to monitor. Various functionaries can access the application and documents online and take timely decisions.
Mr Gauba said the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has recently streamlined the Security Clearance procedures and issued a fresh set of guidelines. A Committee of Officers meets every week in MHA for timely decision on security clearance proposals.
MHA has cleared about 1,100 cases of security clearance in the past one year. Although the given timeline is 90 days, MHA strives to decide Security Clearance cases in 60 days (average time per case in 2018 is 53 days), which is being reduced further. In 2016, there were 209 cases which were over 6 months old; in 2017, this came down to 154 cases and further down to 47 cases in 2018.
MHA is the nodal Ministry for security clearances in certain sensitive sectors before issue of licence/permit, permission, contract etc, to companies/ bidders/individuals by the administrative Ministry.
The objective of national security clearance is to evaluate potential security threats, including economic threats, and provide risk assessment before clearing investment and project proposals in key sectors. The aim is to strike a healthy balance between meeting the imperatives of national security and facilitating ease of doing business and promoting investment in the country.
Special Secretary (IS) Rina Mitra and senior officers of MHA and other Ministries were present during the launch function.
Nivedita /SG Bureau
