Though government overlooked the seniority criterion while appointing the Army Chief, it stuck to the convention while appointing the heads of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), the two Intelligence agencies.
Rajiv Jain, a 1980-batch IPS officer of the Jharkhand cadre, now heads the security desk in the IB. Mr. Jain will take over as the IB chief on January 1, a day after the present chief, Dineshwar Sharma, retires.
Mr. Jain has been appointed for a fixed tenure of two years.
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He was the senior-most in the IB hierarchy and the appointment comes months before he was to superannuate in March 2017.
Mr. Jain has also served at a subsidiary unit of the IB in Ahmedabad from 2004 to 2008. During his present stint as Special Director, Mr. Jain had the primary role of monitoring and strengthening cybersecurity. He had served in Jammu in the 1990s when militancy was at its peak.
The appointment of Anil Dhasmana as the next RAW chief has generated much interest in Pakistan as he is an expert on the Baloch issue, a subject close to the heart of the present dispensation. Mr. Dhasmana is a 1981-batch IPS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre and has been with the external intelligence wing for 23 years. He succeeds Rajinder Khanna, who completes his tenure on December 31.
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Mr. Dhasmana has close ties with the Nepal station of RAW, one of the most critical desks in the region.