Indian Foreign Service officer Geetika Srivastava is set to become the first women chargé d’affaires at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, according to sources on Monday. She will take over after the term of the current CdA Suresh Kumar ends.
Due to the lack of a full-time high commissioner in Islamabad, middle-level diplomats have been appointed as chargés d’affaires since 2019. Ajay Bisaria (IFS:1987), the former Indian high commissioner, was dismissed in 2019 as part of diplomatic tensions following India’s loss of special status for Jammu and Kashmir. India retaliated by removing Pakistan’s envoy.
Srivastava manages India’s multilateral diplomacy with ASEAN, IORA, and other states as the Joint Secretary of the Indo-Pacific desk in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).
Pakistan, on the other hand, has appointed Saad Warraich, the Director General for Afghanistan, Turkey, and Iran at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as its chargé d’affaires to India.
