Dhasmana and Jain will succeed Rajinder Khanna and Dineshwar Sharma.

Ending suspense, the Narendra Modi government today announced the appointment of Anil Dhasmana as the new R&AW chief and Rajiv Jain as Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief. Dhasmana and Jain will succeed Rajinder Khanna and Dineshwar Sharma. Both the officers will have a tenure of two years.

The Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) looks after the external intelligence of the country. Anil Kumar Dhasmana is a 1981 batch IPS officer. He is from the Madhya Pradesh cadre. He was a special secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat. Dhasmana has been in the R&AW for 23 years. He has served on multiple desks including Pakistan. Reports suggest that Dhasmana was supposed to superannuate on October 31, 2017, but with this appointment, he will now retire in December of 2018.

Meanwhile, Rajiv Jain, was serving as a Special Director in the Intelligence Bureau. Jain is a 1980 batch Indian Police Service officer. He was given an apex pay scale of Rs 80,000 in 2015. This was given to remove an anomaly in his salary. He is from the Jharkhand cadre and will take over from Dineshwar Sharma on January 1.

Rajiv Jain is the recipient of President’s Police Medal and has served in various departments of the Intelligence Bureau, including the sensitive Kashmir desk. Jain was the advisor to the previous NDA government’s interlocutor on Kashmir, KC Pant, when talks were held with separatist leaders like Shabbir Shah.

(With inputs from Agencies)