Bureaucratic reshuffle: Deepti Gaur Mukerjee named new higher education secretary

New Delhi witnessed a late-night bureaucratic reshuffle on Monday, as the government appointed Deepti Gaur Mukerjee, a 1993-batch IAS officer from the Madhya Pradesh cadre, as the new higher education secretary. This appointment occurred three weeks after Naresh Pal Gangwar, an IAS officer from the Rajasthan cadre, was initially nominated for the same role, but the appointment was subsequently suspended.

The decision to appoint Gangwar drew criticism on social media due to his family's history of receiving over Rs 1 crore in government horticulture subsidies for commercial cucumber cultivation under the National Horticulture Board scheme. The final installment of the subsidy was released after he assumed the role of secretary for the department of animal husbandry and dairying.

With Mukerjee's appointment, Vineet Joshi, who was recently appointed as secretary, Panchayati Raj, will now become the corporate affairs secretary. Pallavi Jain Govil, currently serving as youth affairs secretary, will take over as the new corporate affairs secretary.

In other bureaucratic moves, Sushil Kumar Lohani, an officer on special duty from the Cabinet Secretariat, has been appointed as the chairman of the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI). Sunil Paliwal, the incumbent IWAI chairman, will be designated as the new youth affairs and sports secretary.

Additionally, the government appointed Assam-Meghalaya cadre IAS officer Archana Verma as the new secretary for the water resources and Ganga rejuvenation department, replacing the incumbent secretary V L Kantha Rao.