Based on its recommendations, a tourist traffic branch was set up the following year, with regional offices in Delhi and Mumbai, and in 1951, in Kolkata and Chennai.

A separate department of tourism under the government was first created on 1 March 1958, that was put under the ambit of the Ministry of Transport and Communications.

[3] After a fall in the number of tourists entering India in 1961 from the preceding year, the government constituted a committee headed by Lakshmi Kant Jha, then secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs, under the Ministry of Finance, to find and examine the reasons.

Further, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi convened a conference in October that year, the deliberations of which resulted in the creation of the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation.

Air India's failure to take this forward owing to losses in revenue "collision" of "egos of tourist officers" led to slump in the growth of tourism.

It was again tied with Civil Aviation that year, headed by Madhavrao Scindia, before the Deve Gowda government in 1996 attached it with the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs.