The Narendra Modi government on Monday, 23rd December approved the appointment of Indian ambassador to the United States Harsh Vardhan Shringla as the next foreign secretary. He will replace Vijay Gokhale folllowing the completion of his two-year term on January 28, 2020.
Harsh Vardhan Shringla will be superseding three foreign service officers: Ruchi Ghanashyam (1982) who is currently the Indian High Commissioner to the UK, Rajeev Chander (1983) who is currently the Indian envoy to the Permanent Mission of India to the UN in Geneva, and Amita Nair (1983) who is serving as India's ambassador to Chile.
A 1984-batch Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer and a fluent French speaker, Shringla served as an ambassador to Bangkok from 2014 to 2016 and later as a High Commissioner to Dhaka for two years. He has also served at UNESCO in France, UN in New York besides Vietnam, Israel and South Africa.
Additionally, he also served in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) as Joint Secretary for Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Maldives and therefore understands South Asian politics and diplomacy very well.
He was also instrumental in steering the America policy with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. He was critical in ensuring that the decisions of Article 370 and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) did not adversely impact bilateral relations between New Delhi and Washington DC.
