AI Governance and Economic Group (AIGEG), constituted by MeitY on 13 April 2026

MeitY's India AI Governance Guidelines of November 2025 recommended an AI Governance Group (AIGG): a "small and effective decision-making body" chaired by the Principal Scientific Adviser, with MeitY, the Ministries of Home Affairs and External Affairs, the Departments of Science and Technology and Telecommunications, regulators including TRAI, the CCI, the Data Protection Board, RBI, SEBI, ICMR and UGC, NITI Aayog and the PSA's office. It was to be supported by a Technology and Policy Expert Committee (TPEC) constituted by MeitY.⁴

Separately, the Economic Survey 2025-26, published in early 2026, proposed an AI Economic Council. MediaNama reported that the Survey called it one of "the most urgent responsibilities" and said it should "calibrate the pace of AI adoption within the country", working separately from the proposed AIGG. The Survey's principles were that major AI deployments should show a credible path to net social and economic benefit, that there should be firm limits ("red lines") on surveillance misuse, worker monitoring, algorithmic discrimination and opaque AI decisions.³ MediaNama's AIGEG article adds that the Survey proposed classifying AI uses as 'deploy now', 'pilot' or 'defer' according to readiness.² The Survey also called for a decade-long roadmap with industry on affected jobs and regions, and backed an AI Safety Institute with a "light, incentive-based and risk-weighted governance approach" in place of dedicated AI laws.³

MeitY's Office Memorandum No. ET/9/2023-ET-(Part 1) of 13 April 2026, titled 'Constitution of AI Governance and Economic Group (AIGEG)', sets up the group. The first page of the memorandum lists ten members:¹

MediaNama identifies the office-holders as Ashwini Vaishnaw (Chair), Jitin Prasada (Vice Chair), S. Krishnan (Convener), Ajay Kumar Sood (PSA), V. Anantha Nageswaran (Chief Economic Adviser), B.V.R. Subrahmanyam (NITI Aayog), Amit Agrawal (Telecommunications) and Abhay Karandikar (Science and Technology), and reports that a Technology and Policy Expert Committee will advise the group on global developments, emerging technologies, risks and regulation. The part of the memorandum beyond its first page was not available for this entry.²¹ The official announcement was a press release from the Press Information Bureau.²

The memorandum's terms of reference include the following:¹

• coordinate policy across ministries, departments and sectoral regulators, and oversee cross-sectoral governance issues;
• review existing mechanisms and issue guidelines to ensure firms are held accountable for compliance with local laws;
• oversee national initiatives on AI governance across the public and private sectors;
• promote responsible AI innovation and beneficial deployment of AI in key sectors;
• study the emerging risks of AI, regulatory gaps and the need for legal amendments;
• develop and oversee India's position and strategy on AI governance;
• work with industry and other stakeholders to develop a roadmap for AI deployment over the next decade, including assessment of the job profiles affected, the geographical concentration of impacts and the extent of automation and augmentation;
• classify AI use cases into categories such as "deploy", "pilot" and "defer" based on readiness in terms of data availability, skills, legal frameworks and capacity for labour adjustment; and
• assess the labour market impacts of AI adoption in advance and develop mitigation strategies and transition plans that account for informality, skill diversity and regional variations.

The first six items track the mandate proposed for the AI Governance Group in the Guidelines, while the last three (the decade-long deployment roadmap, the 'deploy, pilot or defer' classification and advance labour-impact assessment) correspond to the economic-council agenda that the Economic Survey described.⁴³²

MediaNama compared the group with the Guidelines' proposal:²

The change in chair moves the group from the Principal Scientific Adviser, who had chaired the earlier advisory group and subcommittee, to the line minister of the nodal ministry.⁴²

MediaNama's central criticism was that AIGEG leaves out the independent regulators that the Guidelines had recommended, namely TRAI, the CCI and the Data Protection Board, as well as sectoral bodies such as RBI, SEBI, ICMR and UGC, and has a narrow membership of ministers and senior officials from a few ministries.² It also noted a tension between the new body and MeitY's stated policy: Secretary S. Krishnan said in November 2025 that there had been "a conscious and deliberate approach of not leading with regulation", and in an April 2023 parliamentary reply Minister Vaishnaw had said that the government was not considering a law to regulate AI growth.²

Parliament was moving in a different direction at about the same time. A Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology asked in April 2026 that the government examine the feasibility of a comprehensive law to prevent the misuse of AI, though MeitY replied that existing laws were sufficient.⁵ In June 2026 Vaishnaw said in an interview that there was "a requirement for a new law", and on 9 July Krishnan said that MeitY would begin stakeholder discussions on a separate law for AI regulation.⁶⁷ On 8 October 2026 Vaishnaw said that the time for AI regulation had come and that MeitY would release a regulation-focused consultation paper within a month, and MediaNama again noted that AIGEG, set up as the central coordinating mechanism, had left out the regulators that the Guidelines proposed.⁸ The relationship between those talks and AIGEG, whose terms of reference include studying regulatory gaps and the need for legal amendments, was not described in the sources reviewed.

As of 15 October 2026 AIGEG exists as an executive group with no statutory basis, and the sources reviewed report no meetings, decisions, publications or appointments to the Technology and Policy Expert Committee. Its stated work includes the economic and labour roadmap and use-case classification, but no draft of either has been reported. The group's relationship to the IndiaAI Safety Institute, which the Guidelines describe as supporting the AI Governance Group, is likewise not described in the sources reviewed.¹²