To augment commercial links with countries like US, China, the Philippines, Switzerland and Belgium amid ongoing Covid-19 crisis, the Centre in June approved six major appointments to foreign posts for a period of three years. The appointees include two senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers who have been working with the Prime Minister’s Office for long. Senior bureaucrat Brajendra Navnit and young IAS officer Rajeev Topno, who are among the six, have been currently working with the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and have been given tasks to achieve success in their field as expected by the Government.

The others are Ravi Kota, Lekhan Thakkar, H. Atheli, Anwar Hussain Shaik, and N. Ashok Kumar. Brajendra Navnit, a 1999 batch Tamil Nadu cadre IAS officer, has been chosen as Ambassador and Permanent Representative of India to the WTO, Geneva. The Joint Secretary-level post is under the Commerce Ministry. Navnit was last year given an extension in service as Joint Secretary in the PMO. He was appointed as Joint Secretary in PMO in a massive mid-level reshuffle in 2016. Before that, he was then working as Director in PMO.