Ajay Narayan Jha is new expenditure secretary

NEW DELHI: Ajay Narayan Jha, a senior 1982 batch officer presently serving as the environment secretary, has been appointed as the next expenditure secretary in the finance ministry and will take over from Ashok Lavasa on his superannuation at end of this month. He will join as Officer on Special Duty in expenditure department.

This was part of nearly a dozen changes made in the senior bureaucracy on Wednesday. Health secretary CK Mishra has been shifted to the environment ministry and his place will be taken by his batchmate Preeti Sudan who moves from the Department of Food and Public Distribution.

Former UP chief secretary Rahul Prasad Bhatnagar has been appointed as the new secretary, sports, while the present incumbent there, Injeti Srinivas as been moved to corporate affairs as the secretary.

IAS officer Shakuntala Gamlin, presently the chief secretary of Arunachal Pradesh, will be the new secretary of the department of empowerment. Ayurveda physician Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, who was earlier appointed as special secretary in department of AYUSH has now been appointed as secretary of the AYUSH department on a contract basis.