Foreign secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has been given an unprecedented one-year extension after his two-year tenure ends on January 28.
S Jaishankar had replaced Sujata Singh, whose term was abruptly curtailed by the government. (PTI File Photo)
Jaishankar, a 1977-batch IFS officer, served in Singapore, China and the US before he became foreign secretary and was instrumental in closing the India-US nuclear agreement. He has led India’s push for NSG (Nuclear Suppliers Group) membership in spite of Chinese objections.
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The decision on extension of his tenure was conveyed to Jaishankar late Monday evening. Known to keep a low profile, Jaishankar enjoys the confidence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, national security adviser Ajit Doval and external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj. He is on the same page as Doval on India’s policy vis-à-vis Pakistan.
This is the first time that a foreign secretary has been granted an extension beyond the fixed tenure of two years. The extension means there is a good chance for India’s ambassador to Russia, Pankaj Saran, and envoy to China, Vijay Gokhale, to succeed Jaishankar when he retires.
Jaishankar first came in touch with Modi in 2011 in China where he was India’s envoy and the latter was on a visit as the chief minister of Gujarat.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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