New Delhi: Santosh Kumar Sarangi, a 1994-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Odisha cadre, has assumed charge as the new Secretary of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) on Monday.
Prior to this appointment, Sarangi was serving as Director General, Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. His appointment as Secretary, MNRE, was approved by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) on April 18, 2025.
With his new role, Sarangi has succeeded Nidhi Khare, a 1992-batch IAS officer of the Jharkhand cadre, who was holding the additional charge of the post since January 2025, while concurrently serving as Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs.
Sarangi holds a Master of Arts in Political Science from the University of Delhi and a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Duke University, USA. Over the course of his career, he has held several key positions in both the Government of Odisha and the Central Government. In Odisha, he served as District Magistrate in three districts and held important portfolios in the departments of Education, Tourism, Mining and Tribal Affairs, and Science and Technology.
At the Central level, from 2013 to 2019, Sarangi served as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, during which he also held the positions of Chairman, Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), and Chairman, Tea Board of India. He has also served as Additional Secretary in the Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education, and concurrently held the charge of Chairperson, National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), New Delhi.
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