The role of Cabinet Secretary was appointed to senior IAS officer T V Somanathan was on Saturday as he is replacing Rajiv Gauba.
Somanathan was currently serving as Union Finance Secretary and Secretary, Expenditure.
An official order confirming the change of personnel stated, "The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of Shri T V Somanathan, IAS, as Cabinet Secretary with a tenure of two years from 30.08.2024."
"The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has also approved the appointment of Shri T V Somanathan, IAS as Officer on Special Duty in the Cabinet Secretariat from the date he joins the assignment till he takes over as Cabinet Secretary," it read.
Who Is TV Somanathan?
Somanathan, a 1987 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of Tamil Nadu cadre, served as Joint Secretary and Additional Secretary in the Prime Minister's Office under Modi for a little over two years between 2015 and 2017.
Later, he served in his cadre state before being appointed as the Expenditure Secretary in December 2019.
Somanathan (now 59 years) was designated as the Finance Secretary in April 2021.
He is a qualified Chartered Accountant (CA) and Company Secretary (CS), he knows five languages -- English, French, Hausa (spoken in select parts of Africa), Hindi and Tamil, according to official records.
The veteran bureaucrat also has a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in economics from Calcutta University.
Somanathan is also the chairman of a committee, set-up in April last year, to review the pension system for government employees.
He has served in different positions in his cadre state, Centre and abroad. Somanathan worked in the World Bank (USA), Joint Secretary in the Corporate Affairs Ministry and as Managing Director of Chennai Metro Corporation among others.
Rajiv Gauba took over the charge of Cabinet Secretary five years ago on August 30, 2019. Gauba will have the distinction of being the longest serving Cabinet Secretary of the country.
