In charge as the next Foreign Secretary is Vikram Misri.

New Delhi: On Monday, veteran diplomat and China specialist Vikram Misri took over as India's new foreign secretary.

Misri, an Indian Foreign Service officer from the 1989 batch, took over from Vinay Kwatra. Misri took on the important role at a time when India is trying to handle a number of foreign policy issues, including its tense relations with China in the wake of the ongoing border dispute in eastern Ladakh.

Today, Shri Vikram Misri took over as Foreign Secretary. "#TeamMEA wishes Foreign Secretary Misri a prosperous tenure ahead of him and extends a warm welcome," External Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Randhir Jaiswal stated on X.

In his previous role, Misri was the Deputy National Security Advisor (NSA). He holds the unique distinction of being Inder Kumar Gujral's, Manmohan Singh's, and Narendra Modi's private secretary. From 2019 till 2021, Misri represented India as its ambassador to China before being named deputy NSA.

After the clashes in June 2020 in the Galwan Valley, tensions between India and China spiked, and Misri is thought to have been a major factor in those negotiations. After the most significant military confrontation between the two sides in decades—a violent skirmish in the Galwan Valley—the relationship between the two countries fell apart.

Along with these notable appointments, he was India's ambassador to Spain from 2014 to 2016 and Myanmar from 2016 to 2018.