The government has cleared the appointment of Alok Joshi, a 1976 batch IPS officer, as the next secretary of RAW, and Syed Asif Ibrahim, a 1977 batch IPS officer, has emerged as a frontrunner to succeed Nehchal Sandhu as director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB). By appointing Ibrahim of the Madhya Pradesh cadre as DIB, the government wants to send a strong signal to the minority community that often complains that the internal security establishment is dominated by the majority community and the IB has never been headed by a Muslim. 

Top government sources said Joshi will be appointed officer on special duty in RAW until incumbent Sanjeev Tripathi retires on December 30. While formal orders are awaited, Joshi, an operations expert in Pakistan and Nepal, was informed about his new job by the government on Friday night.

Ibrahim, currently serving as a special director in the IB handling cyber operations and security, joined the IB 20 years ago after serving as private secretary to the then railway and later civil aviation minister Madhav Rao Scindia. He was also officer on special duty to home minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed in the VP Singh government and served in Kashmir during the peak militancy years in the 1990s.