New Delhi: The Central government on Friday extended the tenure of Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla till August 22, 2023. In an order, the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) said: “The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved extension in service to Bhalla as Home Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, for a period of one year beyond August 22, 2022, i.e., up to August 22, 2023.”

Bhalla is a 1984-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre. He had replaced Rajiv Gauba, a 1982 batch IAS officer of Jharkhand cadre. He has M Sc in Botany from the University of Delhi, MBA from University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, and M Phil in Social Sciences, Panjab University, Chandigarh.

As a bureaucrat, Bhalla has various key positions. He was Officer on Special Duty (OSD) in the Ministry of Home Affairs from 26.07.2019 till 23.08.2019; Secretary, Ministry of Power, Government of India with effect from 30.6.2017 (AN) till 25.07.2019; Director General of Foreign Trade with effect from 20th October, 2016 with the additional charge of Director, IIFT since 29.11.2016 till 30th June, 2017.

Before joining DGFT, Bhalla worked as an Additional Secretary, Department of Commerce, Government of India with effect from 13th April, 2015. He also functioned as Designated Authority, Directorate General Anti-Dumping since 4th August, 2015. Prior to this assignment, Bhalla worked as a Joint Secretary, Ministry of Coal, Government of India with effect from 1st July 2010 and Additional Secretary, Ministry of Coal, from 8th January 2015 to 12th April, 2015. In this assignment he dealt with allocation and allotment of coal blocks.

In previous assignments in the Government of India, Bhalla has worked as Director (Ports) in the Department of Shipping, from May 2002 to March 2005 and looked after the Port Operations and Human Resource Development matters of all the major ports in the country. Subsequently, he worked as Joint Secretary (Ports) from April 2005 to May 2007 in the Department of Shipping and looked after Port Development, Port Operations, HRD matters relating to major ports. Bhalla has also handled various assignments in the cadre in the States of Assam and Meghalaya. /BI/