Recent 6 months news in Appointments

The Union government has extended the tenure of Ravi Agrawal, the Chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), by 6 months.

His term is now scheduled to conclude in December 2026. He was initially appointed as the CBDT chief for a 1-year term in June 2024.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of Mahesh Dixit as the Director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) for a tenure of 2 years. He succeeds Tapan Kumar Deka.

Pradeep Singh Kharola has rejoined Air India as the Executive Advisor to its Chairman, N Chandrasekaran.

The Department of Financial Services has approved the appointment of Rajendra Kumar Saboo, the Executive Director (ED) of UCO Bank, as the MD & CEO of the bank with additional charge. He will hold this position from June 19, 2026, to August 2026. He succeeds Ashwani Kumar.

Giles Thomson of the United Kingdom has been appointed as the President of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for a 2-year term starting in July 2026. He succeeds Elisa de Anda Madrazo of Mexico.

Kunal Shah, the founder of CRED, has been appointed as the Global Head and CEO of WhatsApp. He succeeds Will Cathcart. It is to be noted that he is the first Indian to lead the messaging platform.

Concurrently, Miten Sampat has been appointed as the interim CEO of CRED, as Kunal Shah has stepped down from the position.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) has approved the reappointment of Tushar Mehta as the Solicitor General of India for a period of 3 years, starting from July 2026.

The ACC has also approved the reappointment of 5 Additional Solicitors General (ASGs) for the Supreme Court for a 3-year term. They are Vikramjit Banerjee, KM Nataraj, Suryaprakash V Raju, N Venkataraman, and Aishwarya Bhati.

The Department of Financial Services has approved the appointment of Hitesh Rameshchandra Joshi as the CMD of the General Insurance Corporation of India (GIC Re).

He will assume the office on 16 June 2026 and will serve until September 2028. He succeeds Narayanan Ramaswamy.

The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), has reconstituted the Expert Committee on Agrobiodiversity for a tenure of 1 year.

Dr PL Gautam has been appointed as the Chair of the committee, and Dr Trilochan Mohapatra has been appointed as the Co-Chair.

The Government of India has nominated Sanjay Lohiya as a Non-Executive Director on the Central Board of the RBI and the State Bank of India (SBI). He succeeds M Nagaraju.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of the Chairperson and members of the National Statistical Commission (NSC).

Dr. Saibal Chattopadhyay has been appointed as the Chairperson, while Prof. Shubhabrata Das, Satyendra Bahadur Singh, and Dr. Madhavan Mukund have been appointed as members of the commission.

Lieutenant General Dhiraj Seth, the current Vice Chief of the Army Staff, has been appointed as the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS). He will assume charge on June 30, 2026, succeeding General Upendra Dwivedi.

Saurabh Vijay, the CEO of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), has assumed additional charge as the CEO of the IndiaAI Mission.

He succeeds Abhishek Singh. Sudeep Shrivastava has assumed charge as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the IndiaAI Mission.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of Prashant Sitaram Lokhande as the Chairperson of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). He succeeds Rahul Singh.

Khalilur Rahman, the Foreign Minister of Bangladesh, has been elected as the President of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). He will serve a 1-year term, succeeding Annalena Charlotte Alma Baerbock.

Neelkanth Mishra has been appointed as the Executive Director at the World Bank for a tenure of 3 years. He succeeds Parameswaran Iyer.

Rajesh Kumar Singh, the Defence Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, has been given the additional charge of Secretary of the Department of Defence Research and Development (DDR&D) and Chairman of the DRDO. He succeeds Dr. Samir V Kamat in these roles.

Justice Meenakshi Madan Rai, previously a Judge of the Sikkim High Court, has been appointed as the Chief Justice of the Patna High Court.

The SEBI has approved the appointment of 2 Executive Directors (EDs) for each of the 3 Market Infrastructure Institutions (MIIs): BSE Ltd (BSE), Central Depository Services Ltd (CDSL), and National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL).

The appointments are as follows: BSE: Saurabh Shukla (Critical Operations) and Gopalan S Raghavan (Regulatory & Compliance), CDSL: Amit Mahajan (Critical Operations) and Nayana Ovalekar (Regulatory & Compliance), NSDL: Subhash Kelkar (Critical Operations) and Ankit Sharma (Regulatory & Compliance).

Ahmadou Al Aminou Lo has been appointed as the Prime Minister (PM) of Senegal. He succeeds Ousmane Sonko.