Senior diplomat Ruchi Ghanashyam has been appointed as India's next High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, the External Affairs Ministry said on Tuesday (28).
She will succeed Y K Sinha who had assumed the charge as the Indian High Commissioner in the UK in December 2016.
Ghanashyam is a 1982-batch Indian Foreign Service officer and she is currently Secretary at the headquarters in Delhi. Earlier, she had successful stints as High Commissioner of India to South Africa and concurrent accreditation to the Kingdom of Lesotho from October 2014 to April 2017.
She also served as a minister in the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations in New York from May 2004 to March 2008. She served as Director (Pakistan) at Headquarters in Delhi from August 2000 to March 2004.
She has also served in the Embassy of India in Brussels, Belgium, Katmandu, Nepal and Damascus, Syria.
Ghanashyam's appointment comes at a crucial time. The UK is in the process of coming out of the European Union.
Recently, UK's prime minister Theresa May said the UK can still make a success of Brexit if it comes out of the European Union without a deal.
Speaking to reporters on the plane as she headed to South Africa on a five-day visit to three African nations, May cited World Trade Organization Chief Roberto Azevedo said: “He said about a no-deal situation that it would not be a walk in the park, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I’ve said right from the beginning that no deal is better than a bad deal.”
(With inputs from UNI)
Purushottam Agrawal and Linda Hess in conversation with Sanjoy K Roy
Swaransh Mishra, Kirpal Singh Panesar and Rajvir Singh Bhachu
