Rajiv Gauba, who will take over as Cabinet Secretary from incumbent P K Sinha, is known as a soft-spoken but no-nonsense officer credited for steering the crucial Ministry of Home Affairs during the last two years, especially captaining the recent developments in Jammu and Kashmir.
A 1982-batch officer of the Jharkhand cadre, he is moving from his North Bloc office to the Cabinet Secretariat in Rashtrapati Bhava, with bureaucrats seeing his elevation as a reward for doing his job without much fanfare and maintaining a low profile.
He has been appointed to the top-most bureaucratic post by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday. He will be an Officer on Special Duty in the Cabinet Secretariat till Sinha leaves the post early next month.
Gauba was to retire as Home Secretary on August 30 at the completion of his two-year term. However, with the new appointment, he will have another two years in the service.
Born in Punjab on August 15, 1959, Gauba graduated in Physics from Patna University and had handled several portfolios at the Centre and Jharkhand government.
He was Jharkhand Chief Secretary before coming to the Centre to become Secretary in Ministry of Urban Development. When the government was looking for a successor for Rajiv Mehrishi, who was retiring as Home Secretary, it chose Gauba.
Gauba had earlier served in MHA as Additional Secretary and handled the sensitive Left Wing Extremism division. He is also credited for labour reforms in Jharkhand and formulating policies to bring down violence in the state.
While he was Collector and District Magistrate for seven years in the districts of Gaya, Nalanda and Muzaffarpur, he also served in the International Monetary Fund, representing India for four years on the Board of IMF.
At the Centre, he also served in Ministries of Home, Defence, Finance, Environment and Forests and Department of Electronics and Information Technology in senior positions.