PremiumThe Appointment Committee of the Cabinet on Thursday approved the appointment of Apurva Chandra, secretary, ministry of labour and employment as secretary, ministry of information and broadcasting. The position was previously held twice by Amit Khare, once from May 2018 to December 2019 and then, April 2020 onwards.
The move comes close on the heels of Anurag Thakur being appointed union minister of I&B.
Chandra who belongs to the 1988 batch of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Maharashtra Cadre, has previously served as Special Director General, Defence Acquisition, Ministry of Defence, where he had supervised defence acquisition from the domestic industry and helped to keep the Defence Forces adequately equipped.
A civil engineer, Chandra had obtained his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a masters in structural engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. He has several years of experience in dealing with issues relating to industries while working with the Government of Maharashtra and the Government of India.
Chandra has spent more than seven years with the ministry of petroleum and natural gas in the Government of India. He has been involved in framing policies with regard to fuel supplies to industries, supply logistics, transportation, storage and distribution of fuel products and so on. He was directly associated with the setting up of city gas distribution companies, LNG (liquified natural gas) import terminals and allocation of gas to industries. Chandra has served on the Board of Directors of Maharatna PSU, GAIL (India) and Petronet LNG Ltd, besides serving as joint secretary, union ministry of HRD (human resource development), department of school education and literacy from August 2011 to February 2013.
Chandra has worked for over four years between 2013 and 2017 as principal secretary (Industries) in the Government of Maharashtra. He was instrumental for a host of new policies like electronic policy, retail policy and single window policy to attract new investments.
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