NEW DELHI: Veteran diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla, currently India’s High Commissioner to Bangladesh, has been appointed as the next Ambassador of India to the United States of America. He will succeed Navtej Sarna, who is expected to retire by the end of the year.
Shringla, a graduate from St. Stephen’s College in New Delhi, worked in the corporate and public sectors in India before joining the Indian Foreign Service in 1984 and has held a variety of key diplomatic posts abroad and in New Delhi in a career spanning 34 years.
Before Bangladesh, he served as India’s Ambassador to Thailand. He has also served at UNESCO in Paris, at the UN in New York, and as a diplomat in Vietnam, Israel and South Africa.
In New Delhi, he was Joint Secretary (Director General) responsible for Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Maldives in the Ministry of External Affairs, and also headed the UN Political and South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (Saarc) divisions in the Ministry.
Before that, he was Director of the Northern Division which deals with Nepal and Bhutan and Deputy Secretary of the Europe West Division.
He will be succeeded in Dhaka by Riva Ganguly Das (IFS 1986), presently Director General, ICCR.