Vinay Kwatra takes over as foreign secretary, Naveen Srivastava tipped for envoy to Nepal

Naveen Srivastava, presently Additional Secretary, handling the East Asia desk in Ministry of External Affairs, is the man who has been an integral part of India-China military commanders meeting to defuse the situation in East Ladakh after PLA transgressed across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in May 2020.

Published on: May 1, 2022, 08:46:36 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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With Vinay Mohan Kwatra taking over as India’s 34th Foreign Secretary today, China expert Naveen Srivastava is tipped to succeed Kwatra as India’s next ambassador to Nepal.

Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra addresses the media on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Denmark, in New Delhi on Sunday. (ANI PHOTO.)

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Srivastava, presently Additional Secretary, handling the East Asia desk in Ministry of External Affairs is the man who has been an integral part of India-China military commanders meeting to defuse the situation in East Ladakh after PLA transgressed across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in May 2020.

While Srivastava, a 1993 batch IFS officer, will be handle the sensitive relations with Nepal, there is very strong possibility of his batchmate Sudhakar Dalela, presently Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington, to be appointed as Ambassador to Bhutan with incumbent Ruchira Kamboj expected to take over as India’s permanent envoy to UN after incumbent T S Tirumurti attains superannuation in June 2022.

Dalela has handled Bhutan as desk-incharge in the MEA before being posted to Washington and was the man who fought the diplomatic battle during the 2017 Doklam crisis precipitated by an aggressive PLA in tri-junction area on the Siliguri corridor.

Although the Modi government is still to take a call on key ambassadorial postings, it is expected that India’s ambassador to Japan Sanjay Kumar Verma will proceed to Canada to replace Ajay Bisaria after the latter attains superannuation. There is no word or decision on who will replace Indian envoy to UK Gaitri Issar Kumar, who also retires in June 2022 as the Modi government is said to be examining options outside the MEA.

Given the Chinese Communist Party influence on Nepalese polity through power and pelf, Srivastava will have a tough time countering the narrative from Beijing with the Himalayan Republic playing on both sides for optimum advantage. However, the Chinese grip on Kathmandu has loosened after the appointment of Sher Bahadur Deuba as Prime Minister and the split within the Maoist-Communist movement in the Himalayan Republic during the time when Vinay Kwatra was ambassador to Nepal.

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

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