S Jaishankar, India's ambassador to US, is the new foreign secretary

India’s ambassador to the United States S Jaishankar has been appointed the new foreign secretary.

Updated on: Jan 29, 2015, 08:23:08 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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S Jaishankar, India's ambassador to the United States, has been appointed the new foreign secretary.

S-Jaishankar-is-considered-the-architect-of-the-Indo-US-nuclear-deal-of-2008-and-the-man-behind-recent-breakthrough-on-its-operationalisation-HT-Photo

Jaishankar, a 1977-batch IFS officer, will serve in his new role for two years. He was scheduled to retire on January 31, but will now succeed foreign secretary Sujatha Singh, who has served in this position for one and a half years and demits office on January 31 instead of as scheduled in August.

Jaishankar is considered the architect of the Indo-US nuclear deal of 2008, and the man behind the recent breakthrough on its operationalisation.

He was previously the envoy to China before being appointed as India's ambassador to the US.

He is said to be the person behind US President Barack Obama's first-off-the-blocks congratulatory call to Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the Lok Sabha poll results were declared in May.

Jaishankar is also said to have been instrumental in reversing the US no-visa policy on Modi, who first met him during a visit to China in 2011.

The two met late Tuesday night.

The announcement was made following a meeting of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet chaired by the PM.

"Appointment of S Jaishankar, IFS batch 1977, as Foreign Secretary vice MS Sujatha Singh with a tenure of two years from the date of assumption of charge or until further orders, whichever is earlier, in keeping with the provisions of FR-56(D)," a late-night announcement said on Wednesday.

The official statement added the tenure of Singh, who took over as the third woman foreign secretary in August 2013, was "curtailed" with immediate effect.

Some reports said Singh was not given any other assignment by the government.

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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