S Jaishankar, the Man Behind Modi's Foreign Policy in First Term, Given Charge of External Affairs Ministry

New Delhi: One of the surprising faces in the newly constituted cabinet under PM Modi, former foreign secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has been allocated the Ministry of External Affairs. Jaishankar was the foreign secretary from January 2015 to January 2018 and has previously held positions like the high commissioner to Singapore, and ambassador to China and the United States of America. During his time as joint secretary at the Ministry of External Affairs, Jaishankar played a significant role in negotiating the Indo-US nuclear deal and made it into a viable, coherent policy for both countries to work on in terms of more defence cooperation, Jaishankar’s term as ambassador in the US was rough from the word go as he walked into the Devyani Khobragade controversy. During his term as foreign secretary, Jaishankar told a committee on external affairs, headed by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, that the border issue between India and China is the “world’s largest real estate dispute” and the committee should not expect the transgressions to go away somehow.