MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup appointed India’s next High Commissioner to Canada



Vikas Swarup, currently serving as the spokesperson in the Ministry of External Affairs, was today appointed as the next High Commissioner of lndia to Canada.

He will replace acting High Commissioner Arun Kumar Sahu and is expected to take up his assignment shortly.

His new assignment comes along with his promotion to the rank of Additional Secretary. The spokesperson’s post is for the rank of Joint Secretary.

Gopal Baglay, who is Joint Secretary in the Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan division in MEA, will succeed Swarup.

Swarup took up the job of MEA spokesperson in April 2015 after the then spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin was promoted. Akbaruddin is now India's Permanent Representative at the United Nations.

Before assuming charge as spokesperson, Swarup held charge as Joint Secretary (United Nations- Political) in the MEA.

A 1986-batch IFS officer, Swarup, whose debut novel "Q&A" was made into the Oscar-winning movie "Slumdog Millionaire", had helmed the high-profile office since April 2015 when India's external engagement witnessed a major traction.

The MEA's social media outreach had witnessed majorexpansion during Swarup's tenure. In December, the ministry had launched a 'Twitter Seva' service with an aim to centralising its grievance redressal mechanism by bringing over 200 social media handles under one platform.

In August, the MEA had launched an app, bringing websites and various social media handles of over 170 Indian missions on a common platform to further its public outreach.

Swarup is an alumnus of Allahabad University where he studied History, Psychology, and Philosophy.

In his diplomatic career, Swarup has been posted in various countries including Turkey, the United States, Ethiopia, Britain, South Africa and Japan.

He had penned his first novel, Q&A when he was posted in London between 2000 and 2003.

The novel has been published in 43 languages including Arabic, French, German, Chinese, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Malayalam, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Polish, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Taiwanese, Thai and Hebrew.

He has also written for TIME, Newsweek, The Guardian, The Telegraph (UK), The Financial Times (UK) and Liberation (France), among others. 
The post of the Indian High Commissioner in Canada had been lying vacant after retirement of Vishnu Prakash and Arun Kumar Sahu had taken charge as acting High Commissioner. India has close ties with Canada in a range of key sectors and the country has sizeable number of Indians. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Network Centric Warfare Capabilities & INDIAN ARMED FORCES

Image
By: Next Generation Weapons Technology Network Centric Warfare and Indian Navy & IAF and land based units. More satellites will be launched as grid as launched previously. In addition to making platforms and infrastructure for network centricity, the Navy has also made organizational changes to create and efficiently manage the transition to seamless Network Centric capabilities. The creation of a new post of Assistant Chief of Naval S taff (Communications Space and Network Centric Operations) is step in the process to migrate from a ‘Platform Centric Navy’ to a ‘Network Enabled Navy’. During various exercises, Network Centric Warfare (NCW) has been one of the crucial aspects being validated. During the various coordinated exercises conducted by the Army with the Air Force, the endeavor has been to validate and integrate the use of all available assets, including satellites, UAVs and HUMINT (Human intelligence) to assist commanders at all levels in taking dynamic and pr...
Read more

Where Is Article 370 Now!!!!, That Rohingyas And Bangladeshis Are Being Settled In Jammu And Ladakh ???

Image
Jammu is up in arms against the authorities. This time, it is not against discriminatory policies being pursued by the successive Kashmir-dominated and Valley-centric governments in Jammu & Kashmir since 1947, but against the settlement of Rohingyas from Myanmar in Jammu and Ladakh, both strategically vital for national security. According to the late Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, the number of Rohingya Muslims living in different parts of Jammu city and around it, was 5,107 in 2010 (AINS, 10 October 2015). And, as per Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s June 2016 Assembly statement, there were 13,400 Rohingyas and Bangladeshis living in camps in Jammu. She said “Bathindi Ka Plot is home to the highest number of Rohingya Muslims” (The Hindustan Times, 5 December 2016). The break-up of Rohingyas settled in the state is as follows: Jammu – 5,086, Jammu’s Samba district – 634 and Ladakh – 7,664. The total number is 13, 334. The Jammu Chamber of C...
Read more

The Heat is on!! for INDIA as China Unveils its 5th Gen Stealth J20 Fighter Jet ; Pakistan expresses interest to buy

Image
China on Tuesday unveiled its J-20 stealth fighter jet at its biggest air show which will have major implications for India as it is the first indigenously-made fifth-generation Chinese aircraft which Pakistan has shown interest in acquiring. Two J-20 aircraft which made waves in the Chinese media in the last few years flew at the Zhuhai city air show where the Pakistan Air Force is also taking part flying with its J-17 Thunder jets which are jointly manufactured with China. This is the first, public show of the J-20 warplane. Pakistan, the largest importer of Chinese arms has said earlier that it is in talks with China to buy the FC-31 - an export variant of the same aircraft. The FC-31 was briefly flown in the 2014 Zhuhai airshow. The stealth aircraft is regarded as major breakthrough for China which is otherwise mostly reliant on Russian aircraft including advanced versions of Sukhois. India is yet to make stealth aircraft which can penetrate through enemy radars. The J...
Read more