Centre appoints 1987 batch IAS officer TV Somanathan as Cabinet Secretary
The Narendra Modi government appointed 1987 batch Indian Administrative Services (IAS) officer TV Somanathan as Cabinet Secretary for a tenure of two years.
The Narendra Modi government on Saturday appointed 1987 batch Indian Administrative Services (IAS) officer TV Somanathan as Cabinet Secretary for a tenure of two years. He succeeds Rajiv Gauba, a 1982 batch IAS officer who had an unprecedented five year term as Cabinet Secretary.
“The Appointments Committee of Cabinet has also approved the appointment of Shri TV Somanathan, IAS (TN:87) as an officer on special duty in the cabinet secretariat from the date he joins the assignment till he takes over as the cabinet secretary,” the statement read.
Gauba was appointed as the cabinet secretary in 2019 for a term of two years. He was later given a year-extension in 2021 and then in 2022 and 2023. He is said to be the architect of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, under which the erstwhile state of J&K was bifurcated into two UTs following the abrogation of Article 370.
A 1987 batch IAS officer, Somanathan has held various positions in the Tamil Nadu government. He holds a Ph. D. in Economics from Calcutta University.
Prior to his appointment as finance secretary, Somanathan served as finance expenditure secretary from 2019 to 2021. He had replaced Girish Chandra Murmu, who was appointed the first lieutenant governor of the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
He was also a joint secretary at Prime Minister's Office (PMO) between 2015 and 2017 and later served as additional secretary at the PMO. Somanathan also served for a brief stint as joint secretary at the ministry of corporate affairs. He was also deputed as director, corporate affairs at the World Bank in Washington DC.
In his parent cadre of Tamil Nadu, Somanathan served as managing director of Chennai Metro Rail Corporation Ltd from 2007 to 2010. He also served as joint secretary at the Chief Minister's office.
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.
Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.
Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.
Home/India News/Centre appoints 1987 batch IAS officer TV Somanathan as Cabinet Secretary
{{^htLoading}}
Advertisement
{{/htLoading}}
SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
{{#usCountry}}{{/usCountry}}
Hindustantimes wants to start sending you push notifications. Click allow to subscribe
