New Delhi. Ajay Kumar, former Defence Secretary, was sworn in as the new Chairman of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on May 15. The oath of office and secrecy was administered by Lt. Gen. Raj Shukla (Retd.), the senior-most member of the Commission.
A 1985-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Kerala cadre, Ajay Kumar brings over three-and-a-half decades of administrative experience at both the state and central levels. He has held several key positions throughout his career, including Principal Secretary of the Information Technology Department in Kerala and Director General of the National Informatics Centre at the Centre. His most recent role was Secretary in the Ministry of Defence.
Ajay Kumarholds a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur. He went on to earn an M.S. in Applied Economics and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Minnesota, USA. In 2019, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Amity University.
As UPSC Chairman, Ajay Kumar will oversee one of India’s most prestigious constitutional bodies responsible for selecting officers into the country’s civil services.
