New Delhi: Nagaraju Maddirala, an IAS officer from the 1993 Tripura cadre, has been appointed as the Secretary of the Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance, Government of India. Maddirala, an alumnus of the University of Hyderabad (UoH), completed his MA in Philosophy from the university between 1988 and 1990 and served as the President of the UoH Students’ Union. In 2019, he delivered a lecture on the Economic Reforms of the 1990s as part of the Alumni Speaker Series at UoH.

Maddirala has served as Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Coal since November 2020, where he played a key role in opening up the coal sector to private commercial mining, overseeing the auction of more than 115 coal mines. His efforts contributed to India achieving a coal production milestone of one billion tonnes this year.

His career includes service at the state, national, and international levels in areas such as public order, revenue administration, tribal development, finance, international economic relations, industries and commerce, healthcare, and state finances.

In Tripura, Maddirala held various positions including District Magistrate, Director of Tribal Welfare, and Secretary/Principal Secretary in departments such as Health, Finance, and Industries & Commerce. Under his tenure, Tripura received several recognitions, including the “Most Improved Small State in E-Governance” by India Today in 2016 and a second-place award from the Government of India for reducing the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) from 26 to 21 in the same year.

Maddirala also served in the Ministry of Finance’s Department of Economic Affairs from 2004 to 2008, later working as an Advisor to the Executive Director at the World Bank in Washington, DC, from 2008 to 2012. He has completed Executive Education at Harvard University on Trade Negotiations and was a visiting fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and a Visiting Research Scholar at Stonehill College. /BI