Vikram Misri, the deputy national security adviser and a former ambassador to China, will be the foreign secretary from mid-July.

He will take charge from Vinay Mohan Kwatra, who is tipped to move to the US as ambassador. India’s ambassador to France, Jawed Ashraf, is expected to be appointed the deputy NSA, reports Telegraph India. A 1989-batch IFS officer, Misri, who is widely regarded as an expert on China, will take over from Kwatra on July 15.

Before he was appointed deputy national security adviser, Misri was India’s ambassador to China, presiding over the Indian mission in Beijing through the turbulent months after the Galwan Valley clashes in June 2020.

The ties between the two nations nosedived following the fierce clash in the Galwan Valley that marked the most serious military conflict between the two sides in decades. Misri has worked in the Prime Minister’s Office of IK Gujral, Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi. He has also been India’s ambassador to Spain and Myanmar and worked in Indian missions in Pakistan, the US, Sri Lanka and Germany.

The outgoing foreign secretary, who took charge on May 1, 2022, was on his second extension. After the first 16-month extension ended in April 2024, Kwatra was given another six months during the Lok Sabha election campaign. The order has now been modified to free him of the charge.

The ambassador’s post in Washington has been vacant since January this year after the retirement of incumbent Taranjit Singh Sandhu, who went on to join the BJP and contest the Lok Sabha elections from Amritsar. The government is also learnt to be in the process of appointing India’s envoy to the US and New Delhi’s permanent representative to the United Nations in New York. The position of India’s permanent representative to the UN is also lying vacant after Ruchira Kamboj retires this month.