The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) Wednesday cleared the appointment of Anshu Prakash as the new secretary in the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), replacing incumbent Aruna Sundararajan, a Kerala cadre 1982-batch IAS officer, who is retiring on July 31 after a two-year stint.
Prakash, a 1986-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram-Union Territories (AGMUT) cadre has been currently working as an additional secretary in the telecom department.
Prior to the current role, he was appointed as a chief secretary of Delhi in December 2017 and had a bitter spat with the Arvind Kejriwal-headed Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government.
His immediate challenge would be making the upcoming spectrum auction a success as well as the revival of the two public-sector telcos- Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL), say industry experts.
Prakash is an economics graduate from the St. Stephen's College and has an MBA degree from the Faculty of Management Studies at the University of Delhi.
Sundararajan was touted as one of main architects of the National Digital Communications Policy 2018.
Her last major decision as also the chairman of the Digital Communications Commission (DCC) was to clear penalties on Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel worth Rs 3050 crores. |