Vinay Kwatra is new Foreign Secretary, Harsh Shringla coordinator for 2023 G-20

A 1988 batch IFS officer, Vinay Kwatra was former ambassador to France and has worked in Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) of Narendra Modi as Joint Secretary while serving on key desks like Americas and Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan.

Published on: Apr 4, 2022, 18:14:02 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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Indian Ambassador to Nepal Vinay Mohan Kwatra takes over as the new Foreign Secretary of India while present incumbent Harsh Shringla is expected to take over as Coordinator of the G-20 summit, scheduled to take place in New Delhi in November 2023.

India's new foreign secretary Vinay Kwatra.

A 1988 batch IFS officer, Kwatra was former ambassador to France and has worked in Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) of Narendra Modi as Joint Secretary while serving on key desks like Americas and Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. He has worked closely with PM Modi before he was appointed as Ambassador to France and has a good working relationship with both External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.

Harsh Shringla, who completes more than two years as Foreign Secretary, demits office on April 30. During his tenure, the 1984 batch IFS officer was instrumental in India reaching out in the Indian Ocean Region with very close partnership with Bangladesh, Bhutan, and other India’s neighbors. A quiet worker, Shringla pushed the Indian foreign policy despite being seriously constricted by the spread of Covid-19 pandemic since March 2020.

Shringla will now oversee the entire preparations of G-20 summit, which will be for the first time be held in India next year, from the Chanakyapuri building of the MEA.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
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.Read More