Ashok Malik is Partner and Chair of the India Practice at The Asia Group, a business and strategic advisor firm headquartered in Washington, DC. [1] He is former policy advisor/additional secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, government of India, having served in that position from October 2019 to August 2022. While in that role, he was the highest ranked non-career civil servant in the Ministry. [2] He was also a member of prestigious Padma Award committee 2023.
From 1 August 2017, to 31 July 2019, Malik served as press secretary to the President of India. He relinquished office after his two-year term came to an end.
Prior to joining government, Malik was a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, [3] a public policy think-tank based in India. As a columnist, he wrote for a publications such as Times of India and Hindustan Times. [4]
Born in 1969, Malik studied at La Martiniere Calcutta (Kolkata), and graduated from Presidency College (now University) in the same city. He began his career in the Telegraph newspaper in Calcutta in 1991 and subsequently was associated with other publications such as Times of India, India Today and Indian Express .[ citation needed ]
In 2006, he embarked on a career as a self-employed columnist. [5] In 2015 he joined the Observer Research Foundation. In 2016, he was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian honour. [6]
Arun Jaitley was an Indian politician and attorney. A member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Jaitley served as the Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs of the Government of India from 2014 to 2019. Jaitley previously held the cabinet portfolios of Finance, Defence, Corporate Affairs, Commerce and Industry, and Law and Justice in the Vajpayee government and Narendra Modi government.
Pranab Kumar Mukherjee was an Indian politician who served as the 13th president of India from 2012 until 2017. He was the first person from West Bengal to hold the post of President of India. In a political career spanning five decades, Mukherjee was a senior leader in the Indian National Congress and occupied several ministerial portfolios in the Government of India. Prior to his election as President, Mukherjee was Finance Minister from 2009 to 2012. He was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 2019, by his successor as president, Ram Nath Kovind.
The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is the administrative arm of the All India Services of Government of India. The IAS is one of the three All India Services along with the Indian Police Service and Indian Forest Service. Members of these three services serve the Government of India as well as the individual states. IAS officers are also deployed to various government establishments such as constitutional bodies, staff and line agencies, auxiliary bodies, public sector undertakings, regulatory bodies, statutory bodies and autonomous bodies.
Jyotindra Nath Dixit was an Indian diplomat, who served as Foreign Secretary (1991–1994), the top bureaucrat in the Ministry of External Affairs. At the time of his death, he was the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and is mostly remembered for his role as a negotiator in disputes with Pakistan and China.
The Indian Foreign Service (IFS) is a diplomatic service and a central civil service of the Government of the Republic of India under the Ministry of External Affairs. The Foreign Secretary is the head of the service. Vikram Misri is the 35th and the current Foreign Secretary.
Ashok Jhunjhunwala is an Indian academic and innovator. He received his B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and PhD from the University of Maine. He has been a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras since 1981. He is the President of IIT Madras Research Park and Chairman of International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. During his career, he has contributed extensively to technology innovation and adoption in the Indian context.
Narinder Nath Vohra, popularly referred as N. N. Vohra, is a retired 1959 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of Punjab cadre who was the 12th governor of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. He was the first civilian governor of Jammu and Kashmir in eighteen years after Jagmohan.
Keshav Malik was an Indian poet, art and literary critic, arts scholar, and curator. He remained art critic for the Hindustan Times (1960–1972) and The Times of India (1975–2000). He published eighteen volumes of poetry and edited six anthologies of English translations of Indian poetry.
Nirupama Menon Rao is a retired civil servant of 1973 batch Indian Foreign Service cadre who served as India's Foreign Secretary from 2009 to 2011, as well as being India's Ambassador to the United States, China and Sri Lanka during her career.
Ranjan Gogoi is an Indian former advocate and judge who served as the 46th Chief Justice of India from 2018 to 2019, having previously served as a Judge of the Supreme Court of India from 2012 to 2018. He is currently a Member of the Rajya Sabha, having been nominated by President Ram Nath Kovind on 16 March 2020. Gogoi served as a judge in the Gauhati High Court from 2001 to 2010, and then was transferred as a judge to the Punjab and Haryana High Court from 2010 to 2011 where he later was the Chief Justice from 2011 to 2012. He is also a member of the Committee on External Affairs in the Rajya Sabha.
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, better known as S. Jaishankar, is an Indian diplomat, politician and author, who is serving as the 30th Minister of External Affairs of the Government of India since 31 May 2019. He is the longest serving Minister of External Affairs since Jawaharlal Nehru, who held the position during his entire 17 years as Prime Minister. Jaishankar is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party and has been a Member of Parliament (MP) in the Rajya Sabha. He previously served as the Foreign Secretary from January 2015 to January 2018.
Ram Nath Kovind is an Indian politician and lawyer who served as the 14th president of India from 2017 to 2022. He is the first person from Uttar Pradesh to serve as President of India. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party and also the first person from BJP to become the President of India. Prior to his presidency, he served as the 26th Governor of Bihar from 2015 to 2017. He also served as a Member of Rajya Sabha from 1994 to 2006. Before entering politics, he was a lawyer for 16 years and practiced in the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India until 1993.
Krishan Kumar Aggarwal was an Indian physician and senior cardiologist who was President of the Confederation of Medical Association of Asia and Oceania (CMAAO), President of the Heart Care Foundation of India and the Past National President of Indian Medical Association. In 2010, the Government of India honored him with the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian award, for his contributions to the field of medicine.
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Syamal Bhushan Ghosh Dastidar is an ex-Indian civil servant, former Member Traffic of the Railway Board and Ex-Officio Secretary to the Government of India. In 2009, he was the only person to be awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award, in the civil service category.
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