Ajit Doval, the National Security Advisor (NSA) to Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a retired Indian Police Services (IPS) officer of the Kerala cadre and a former Indian intelligence and law enforcement officer. He has earned the nickname "The James Bond of India."
Doval joined the Indian Police Service in 1968 and was actively involved in anti-insurgency operations in Mizoram and Punjab. He was one of the three negotiators who were instrumental in securing the release of the passengers from the hijacked IC-814 in Kandahar in 1999. He successfully negotiated at least 15 hijackings of Indian airlines aircraft between 1971 and 1999.
He spent a major part of his career as an active field intelligence officer with the Intelligence Bureau (IB). With a plethora of well-known awards, honours and records to his credit, Doval has built a reputation for taking a strict stance against militancy and terrorism.
After his retirement in 2009, Doval became the founder director of Vivekananda International Foundation. He supervised the 2014 rescue of 46 Indian nurses who were trapped in a hospital in Tikrit, Iraq. On June 25, 2014, he took off on a top-secret mission and travelled to Iraq to learn more about the situation there and establish high-level contacts with the Iraqi administration.
Doval managed the execution of India's surgical operation in September 2016 and airstrikes on Balakot in Pakistan in February 2019. He also made a contribution to the resolution of the Doklam standoff and took forceful action to quell the Northeast insurgency.
Recently Doval met his US counterpart, Jake Sullivan, and discussed wide-ranging issues, including a restricted discussion on regional and global issues of mutual interest. The two presented an ambitious proposal for Indo-US cooperation in seven distinct high-technology fields, including semiconductors, next-generation telephony, artificial intelligence, and military, during the meeting. In the past also, the two have engaged regularly in extensive discussions on various bilateral, regional and global agendas. The two are expected to continue their high-level interaction in future also.
Recently, Doval said Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had the audacity to fearlessly challenge the British and India would not have been partitioned if he was there at that time, while delivering speech at the first Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose memorial lecture organised by the industry chamber Assocham.