NEW DELHI: Senior bureaucrat Sanjay Mitra has taken over as defence secretary, succeeding G Mohan Kumar.
A 1982-batch IAS officer, Mitra earlier served as secretary in the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.
He will have a fixed tenure of two years as defence secretary. He had also served as chief secretary of West Bengal. As defence secretary, his immediate priority is likely to be the roll out of the ambitious Starategic Partnership (SP) model, besides handling various other key issues relating to the armed forces.
The Union Cabinet had yesterday given a go ahead to the SP model under which select private firms will be engaged to build military platforms like fighter jets, submarines and battle tanks. Mitra is a post-graduate in physics and economics.
He also did his Mason Fellowship at the prestigious John F Kennedy School of Governance in Harvard University.
The Appointments Committee of Cabinet (ACC) had approved his appointment initially as officer on special duty (OSD) in the Defence Ministry. Kumar's term had come to an end yesterday.