Former Cabinet Secretary and Principal Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) P.K. Sinha has relinquished his high-profile position on personal grounds.
Top sources in the government have confirmed the development to The Hindu .
Mr. Sinha’s sudden exit has triggered speculation and theories about possible causes.
Except confirmation about his exit, there was no other communication from the government.
He was appointed in the PMO first as Officer on Special Duty (OSD) briefly and then as Principal Advisor, a specially created position for him, in September 2019 after the 2019 parliamentary polls.
Earlier, he was Secretary, Ministry of Power in the government of India and served as Cabinet Secretary for four years from 2015.
Mr. Sinha is a retired 1977 batch IAS officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre and served in various capacities during the UPA and the NDA regimes.
His is the second high profile exit from the PMO after PM’s Principal Secretary Nripendra Misra had resigned after the last Lok Sabha polls.
In the PMO, he looked after policy matters of all the Ministries and Departments and monitored important projects and programmes.
Besides him, two senior officials are serving as Advisors in the PMO: Bhaskar Khulbe and Amarjit Sinha, both 1983 batch retired IAS officials.
Former Gujarat cadre IAS officer PK Mishra is the Principal Secretary to the PM while National Security Advisor (NSA) AK Doval is a former Kerala cadre IPS officer.
