A Committee of Secretaries has selected Nitin Gupta, a 1986 batch IRS officer, as a new Chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), an apex body of the Income Tax Department. His appointment was approved by the Appointment Committee of Cabinet(ACC).
- He will replace Sangeeta Singh, a 1986 batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer who is an incumbent chairman of CBDT after JB Mohapatra, a full time chairman retired as the head of the direct taxes administration body on 30th April 2022.
About Nitin Gupta:
Nitin Gupta is currently a Member of CBDT handling the charge of Investigation.He is the 1st CBDT Member after 3 years who is appointed for the independent charge of Investigation.
About Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT):
The CBDT is an administrative body for the Income Tax department, headed by a Chairman and can have 6 members who are in the rank of special secretary.
- At present there are 5 members with 1985-batch IRS officer Anuja Sarangi being the senior-most member and other members are Pragya Sahay Saksena and Subashree Anantkrishnan, both from the 1987 batch of the IRS.
Tapan Kumar Deka is IB’s New Chief, Samant Goel Gets another 1 year Tenure as R&AW Chief
i.Tapan Deka,a 1988 batch IPS officer of the Himachal Pradesh cadre has been appointed the new Director of Intelligence Bureau (IB), central intelligence agency. He will replace incumbent Arvind Kumar from 30th June 2022 till June 2024, for a period of two years.
- He was handling the operations division of the IB and was also the operations joint-director when Indian Mujahideen (IM) activities were at peak in India.
- He also handled operations during the 2015-16 Pathankot air base attack and the 2019 Pulwama attack.
ii.Samant Kumar Goel, an officer of the Punjab cadre, current chief of Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), has been given an extension of one year in his tenure which comes to an end on 30th June 2022.
iii.Former Punjab Director General of Police (DGP) Dinkar Gupta has been appointed as the new chief of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Special Director in the IB Swagat Das as Special Secretary in the Home Ministry.
- He has earlier served in London against Khalistani forces in 2019 and also in Dubai.
Former foreign Secretary Shyam Saran Elected New President of IIC
Former foreign secretary Shyam Saran has been elected as the new president of the India International Centre (IIC). He took charge as the President of IIC succeeding Narinder Nath Vohra(N N Vohra). The President of the IIC is elected once in 5 years.
About Shyam Saran:
i.Shyam Saran has also served as Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for Nuclear Affairs and Climate Change.
ii.He left his government service in 2010 and headed the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), a prestigious think-tank focusing on economic issues (2011-2017) and was also the chairman of the National Security Advisory Board under the National Security Council from 2013 to 2015.
Achievements:
i.In 2017, his 1st book was published and his 2nd book How China Sees India and the World has been published recently.
ii.He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2011 for his contributions to civil service.
- In May 2019, he was conferred the Spring Order Gold and Silver Star by the Emperor of Japan for promoting India-Japan relations.
