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Rohit Kansal is a senior civil servant with India’s permanent bureaucracy. A member of the batch of 1995 of the Indian Administrative Service, IAS- he is currently the Principal Secretary to the Government of Jammu and Kashmir where his responsibilities include the departments of Power, Energy and Information. He is also the official Spokesman of the government.
He has, in his two decade long career in public service, held challenging public policy assignments in diverse sectors- infrastructure, clean energy, financial services et al. He has worked in Jammu and Kashmir for over 2 decades where he has led diverse portfolios and assignments.
As head of power and energy department in J&K, he has taken a number of steps to make J&K energy surplus by harness its immense hydropower and by venturing into renewable energy. He has keenly been involved in the policy framework of the ambitious Indian National Solar Mission as well as policy interventions in the decentralised space to promote energy access.
He is best known for initiating and implementing the very successful and innovative Back to Village programme in J&K which has found mention not just in Hon’ble PM’s radio broadcast Mann ki Baat but also in his Independence Day speech from the Red Fort, New Delhi in 2020.
In 2014, when the worst ever floods in over a century hit Jammu and Kashmir, Kansal who was then the Divisional Commissioner of Kashmir coordinated the largest ever relief process in the Kashmir valley, oversaw disbursement of compensation to over 1 lakh affected families and led a $ 250 million (Rs. 1800 crores) flood recovery cum resilience and Disaster Management programme for rebuilding damaged infrastructure.
He has also been involved in teaching, research and writing. He has been invited by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and has also lectured at various institutions around the world including in Japan, Cambodia, Australia and Austria. He has served as a Sherpa in the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Group on Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL), as well as an expert in the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM).
He has been an Emerging Leaders Fellow of the Australia-India Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia as well as a fellow at the London School of Economics, London. He has been conferred the Chief Minster’s Republic Day Award for public service (2018) in Jammu and Kashmir.
He has taught undergraduate courses at the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University.His case studies on administrative and strategic issues have been published by the National Civil Service Academy, LBSNAA where he also had the distinction of being judged the Best All Round Officer Trainee.
Rohit Kansal holds a management graduate degree from the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Thapar University of Punjab, India. Widely travelled, he has been published in mainstream newspapers and travel journals too. He is a fellow of the Third Generation of Ananta Aspen’s Kamalnayan Bajaj Fellowship and member of Aspen Global Leadership Network.
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