In a major bureaucratic reshuffle, the Centre appointed Chanchal Kumar, a 1992-batch Bihar cadre IAS officer, as the new Information and Broadcasting Secretary. The incumbent, Sanjay Jaju, was shifted as Secretary at the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region, according to an order issued by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) on Tuesday.
Currently, Kumar is posted as Secretary, Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region. This development comes as the Government has constituted seven empowered groups of secretaries to prepare a response to deal with emerging situations and the impact of the ongoing West Asia conflict.
Several IAS officers from the 1995 batch who were empanelled as secretaries last month, have now been posted across several ministries. Among them is Rohit Kansal, a 1995 AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram, and Union Territories)-cadre officer who has been appointed the rural development secretary following the superannuation of the incumbent, Shailesh Kumar Singh, on Tuesday.
Bhuvnesh Kumar, a 1995-batch IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre, has been appointed as the new Tourism Secretary, replacing Srivatsa Krishna (1994 batch, Karnataka Cadre), who has been appointed as Minority Affairs Secretary. Minority Affairs Secretary Chandra Sekhar Kumar, a 1992-batch IAS officer of the Odisha cadre, has been appointed as Chief Executive Officer, National Rainfed Area Authority, which operates under the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, in the rank and pay of Secretary to the Government of India.
Bharat Harbasnlal Khera, a 1995-batch IAS officer of the Himachal Pradesh cadre, currently serving as Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, has been appointed as Officer on Special Duty, Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. Khera will take over as Secretary, Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, in place of Subhas Chandra Lal Das, who will be superannuating on April 30.
Nivedita Shukla Verma, a 1991-batch IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre, who was working as Secretary, Department of Chemicals and Petro-Chemicals, has been appointed as Secretary, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances. Tejveer Singh, a 1994-batch IAS officer of the Punjab cadre, currently posted in his cadre, will succeed Verma as Secretary, Department of Chemicals and Petro-Chemicals.
In a separate order, the Government also shifted Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, a 1996-batch IAS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre who is presently posted as the Director-General, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Now, Kidwai has been appointed as Additional Secretary, Department of Personnel & Training. Vir Vikram Yadav, a 1996-batch IAS officer of the Odisha cadre, will be the new DGCA director-general.
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Gyanendra D Tripathi, a 1998-batch IAS officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre, who is posted in his cadre, has been appointed as Additional Secretary, Department of Agricultural Research & Education and Secretary, Indian Council of Agricultural Research.
N Gulzar, a 1999-batch IAS officer of the Andhra Pradesh cadre, who was posted as Additional Secretary, Department of Telecommunications, has now been appointed as Member Secretary, National Capital Region Planning Board, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.
The order also shows that a key official involved in organising the AI Impact Summit 2026 has been moved out of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. Abhishek Singh, a 1995-batch, Nagaland-cadre IAS officer who was serving as Director General of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and was recently empanelled as a secretary, has been shifted from the ministry to serve as Director-General of the National Testing Agency under the Ministry of Education.
Narendra Bhooshan, a 1992-batch IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre, who is posted in his cadre, has now been appointed as Secretary, Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development.
