Government to appoint disaster-handling experts as National Disaster Management Authority members

Ending the practice of appointing politicians and retired bureaucrats with no background of disaster management, the government has decided to hire members for NDMA who are domain experts adept in handling man-made and natural crisis.

Inviting applications for appointment as members of National Disaster Management Authority, the Home Ministry said aspirants must have administrative, superintendence and management experience of disaster-situation and mitigation efforts.

In a notification, the Ministry said candidates should have contributed towards policy and plan formulation for disaster management, response and mitigation. Other criteria include academic achievements and contribution to developing response and mitigation mechanism for various types of disasters like flood, tsunami, cyclones, drought, earthquakes and emergencies like chemical, radiological, biological and nuclear emergencies.

The Prime Minister is the ex-officio chairperson of the National Disaster Management Authority. During UPA rule, the NDMA vice-chairperson enjoyed the rank of a Union Cabinet Minister while members enjoyed the status of Ministers of State.

However, the Narendra Modi government downgraded the posts and made the post of vice-chairperson equivalent to the union cabinet secretary and members equivalent to union government secretary.

The appointment notification has no reference to appointment of the vice-chairperson. Though the last NDMA had nine members, the Modi government is likely to appoint only four members.

The last NDMA was headed by Congress politician M Shashidhar Reddy and members were mostly retired bureaucrats or police officers.