Shillong-born Rajinder Khanna has been appointed as the Deputy National Security Adviser of India. The former RAW chief has long experience of working in the Northeast, and has also served in Thailand and Myanmar.
Khanna is a former chief of India’s external intelligence agency RAW. A 1978 batch Research and Analysis Wing Service officer, he has long experience of supervising several counter-terrorism operations.
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The post of Deputy NSA was lying vacant since Arvind Gupta, a former Indian Foreign Service officer, completed his tenure in August 2017. Gupta was in August 2014 appointed to the post.
The National Security Council, headed by Modi with National Security Adviser Ajit Doval as its Secretary, is the apex body on all internal and external security-related matters.
It is for the first time when both the NSA and the Deputy NSA are from intelligence agency background.
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Doval, a former Indian Police Service officer, retired as chief of Intelligence Bureau, in January 2005. Doval was India’s main negotiator with the hijackers of the Indian Airlines plane IC-814 that was taken to Kandahar in Afghanistan in 1999.