Amitabh Mathur, a 1977-batch IPS officer who till a year ago headed the Aviation Research Centre (ARC), has now been appointed as an advisor in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to handle Tibetan affairs.

The appointment follows a trend of several former intelligence chiefs being given key assignment by the NDA government after retirement.

Officials said that while the notification mentions that Mathur would be a consultant/advisor on the Northeast, he will exclusively act as an interlocutor on Tibet, which remains a major stumbling block for Indo-China relations.

Mathur retired as head of the ARC — the aviation wing of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) — and held the post of a Special Secretary, the same rank he will have in his new assignment. He was at one point a contender for the post of R&AW chief. Even while in the R&AW, he was keenly involved in Tibetan affairs.

The MHA already has an adviser on left-wing extremism and Naxal affairs in K Vijay Kumar, the former chief of the CRPF. That appointment was made by the UPA government.

Earlier, the former chiefs of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the R&AW were rehabilitated by the NDA government. Asif Ibrahim, the ex-IB chief, was appointed special envoy on counter-terrorism, while former R&AW chief Alok Joshi was made head of the National Technical Research Organisation, the country’s technical intelligence unit.

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