Nripendra Misra: The Officer Architect

SIX DECADES in bureaucracy and as the top executive authority in the Prime Minister’s Office couldn’t have prepared Nripendra Misra for this one-line brief — build a temple for Ram that will last at least a thousand years. In February 2020, when Misra expressed his keenness to take on the responsibility, he couldn’t have fathomed what the project entailed — the scale, the complexity, and the need for seamless coordination between not just the contractor (L&T), consultant (Tata Consulting Engineers), and client (Ram Janmabhoomi Trust), but also the architect (C B Sompura), master planner (Design Associates), and various local, state and national agencies.

But for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, civil engineering expertise or knowledge of agama shastra (manual for temple building and rituals) was definitely not the key consideration to pick Misra to helm one of the most important ideological projects of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar.

Modi had, after all, worked closely with Misra over the five years that the latter served as Principal Secretary to the PM, during Modi’s first term in 2014-19. In May 2014, Misra was pitched as the bureaucrat best placed to understand the new Prime Minister, translate his politics into policy, help him navigate the many gol chakkars of Lutyens Delhi, and administer the mammoth government machinery from Raisina Hill.

Pinpointing the attributes that prompted Modi to approve Misra’s appointment as the chairperson of the construction committee under the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, a senior bureaucrat said, “He trusts his colleagues, empowers them to be candid with their views, and is a leader who motivates. He takes decisions quickly, and is a stickler for time schedules. Most