Senior Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer and noted novelist Vikas Swarup of Slumdog Millionaire-fame will be the India's High Commissioner to Canada, as announced on 16th Feb 2017.
Swarup, currently working as Spokesperson in the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi, will replace Arun Kumar Sahu who is currently working as acting Indian High Commissioner to Canada.
Slumdog Millionaire which won eight Oscar's was based on Swarup's successful debut novel "Q&A".
MEA is set to appoint Gopal Baglay, who is currently joint secretary (Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran), as the new official spokesperson.
Baglay has earlier served as India’s deputy high commissioner to Pakistan. He was also the director in former external affairs minister S M Krishna’s office.
Baglay, who had served in Nepal and Russia, is deft at handling the media as he was earlier posted in the External Publicity Division in MEA as a director and was responsible for President’s visits.
Swarup, whose debut novel Q & A was made into the Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, had helmed the high-profile office since April, 2015. Swarup had earlier served in Turkey, the US, Ethiopia, Britain, South Africa and Japan.
Under Swarup’s leadership, the MEA had launched a ‘Twitter Seva’ service to centralise its grievance redressal mechanism.
MEA had previously also launched an app, bringing websites and various social media handles of over 170 Indian missions on a common platform.
