New Delhi

India's coalition government, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party since this month's general election, has stirred controversy with plans to create a broad ministry for information technology (IT), to be headed by a non-technical person.

Because of the birth pains and confusion over its terms of reference, the ministry, whose creation was announced last week, will be under the control of the prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, until a minister is appointed.

In the meantime, a senior official from the Indian Administrative Service has been appointed secretary to the ministry, causing concern in the country's IT industry.

The main obstacle to the creation of the ministry is likely to be existing ministries, whose authority and powers will be diluted as some of their responsibilities are transferred.

Government officials say that the IT ministry will promote Internet, e-commerce and knowledge-based industries without encroaching on existing ministries. But the Department of Electronics will come under the IT ministry, which will also take over the Internet and e-commerce services of the Ministry of Telecommunications.

Some of the functions of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting — such as Internet-on-cable and cable television — will also be taken over. So will the National Informatics Centre (NIC), the country's first and largest government computer network.

N. Seshagiri, the founding director of NIC (see Nature 366, 622; 1993) says that, although he welcomes the new ministry, “it should be run, at least initiallly, by an IT professional”.

N. Chandrasekaran, director of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing in Bangalore, argues that the ministry “will facilitate India's smooth integration into the global marketplace”. But Swami Manohar, a professor of computer science at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, doubts that a separate IT ministry is needed.

“Given the convergence of computing, communication and broadcasting, the partitioning of the individual domains could be contentious, and the IT ministry may find itself spending most of its energy wrangling with other ministries to sort out the turf,” says Manohar.