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India’s AI group is a coordination committee dressed up as a governance body

There must be a Supreme AI Council that operates at the apex. It must be chaired by the Prime Minister, with real authority, full representation, and a mandate to act.

On 13 April 2026, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued an Office Memorandum constituting the AI Governance and Economic Group—AIGEG. The document runs to a single page. For a nation of 1.4 billion people standing at the most consequential technological inflexion point in human history, that single page is both a beginning and an indictment.

To be fair, AIGEG is better late than never. The group brings together the Minister of Electronics and IT as Chairperson, the Minister of State as Vice Chairperson, the Principal Scientific Advisor, the Chief Economic Advisor, the CEO of NITI Aayog, and Secretaries of Telecommunications, Economic Affairs, and Science and Technology. The National Security Council Secretariat has a representative. The MeitY Secretary serves as Member Convener. It is a respectable gathering of senior officialdom. But senior officialdom, however distinguished, is not the same as governance. And coordination is not the same as command.

The composition of AIGEG reveals its limitations with uncomfortable clarity. The Ministry of Defence is absent. Whether this reflects deliberate exclusion for reasons of operational security or simply an oversight, the gap is significant. Artificial intelligence is already transforming warfare—autonomous systems, predictive targeting, electronic intelligence, and battlefield logistics are being reshaped in real time. A national AI governance body that does not formally include defence is governing half a revolution.

The National Security Council Secretariat’s presence is welcome; but it must be matched by equivalent permanence from the innovation ecosystem that is actually building these systems.

The Ministry of Education is equally absent. AI will........

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