Ajay Bhushan Pandey, the chief executive the Unique Identification Authority of India- the body that administers Aadhaar, will take over as the chairman of the Goods and Services Tax Network from immediate effect.

Pandey has been heading UIDAI since its inception in 2010.

An electrical engineer from IIT Kanpur, Pandey went to the University of Minnesota in 1998, where he obtained his MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science. He is an officer of Indian Administrative Service from the 1984 batch.

In an earlier interaction with Moneycontrol, Pandey had outlined the UIDAI’s vision for Aadhaar and the benefits of having the number as an identity system in the country.

GSTN is the IT backbone of the GST regimes, introduced in India on July 1.

The tenure of Navin Kumar, Chairman, Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) got over on 29 August, and the Department of Personnel and Training has named Pandey as the chairman “with immediate effect and until further orders,” said a Ministry of Finance order.

In an interaction with Moneycontrol in July, the outgoing chairman Kumar had said that the data generated through GSTN would, over time, be able to solve the issue such as tax evasion and help compliance ratings in the country.

He had also said at the time that the new tax regime would prove to be a boon for the small and medium IT companies in the country.