Ajit Kumar Doval: the first police officer in India to be awarded the Kirti Chakra for meritorious service is now appointed as the National Security Advisor to the 15th Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi on 30 May 2014. He was formerly the director of Intelligence Bureau, India 2004-2005, after spending a decade as the head of its operations wing. Explore the success story of brave police officer in this article.
An Army officer’s son, Ajit Doval was born in Garhwal, Uttarakhand in 1945.
Education:
- Early education at the King George’s Royal Indian Military aCollege (now Rashtriya Military School) Ajmer.
- Graduation from University of Agra (1967) Masters in Economics.
Jobs
- It is worth praising his police career – Doval is an IPS officer from the 1968 batch of the Kerala cadre.
- Spectacular work in Mizoram, Punjab and Kashmir helps him in won the awards & honors.
- During the Mizo National Front (MNF) insurgency, Doval won over 6 of the 7 Laldenga’s commanders.
He spent long periods of time incognito with the Mizo National Army in the Arakan in Burma and inside Chinese territory. From Mizoram, Doval went to Sikkim where he played a role during the merger of the state with India. In Punjab he was behind the rescue of Romanian diplomat Liviu Radu and the success of Operation Black Thunder.
Doval was actually inside the Harimandir Sahib in Amritsar, Punjab, in 1989 during Operation Black Thunder, when security forces were charging in to flush out terrorists from there. He is said to have planned out the Punjab state elections of 1992. He spent six years in Pakistan. He went to Kashmir in 1990 and persuaded militants (like Kuka Parray) to become counter-insurgents targeting hardline anti-India terrorists. This set the way for state elections in Jammu and Kashmir in 1996.
Later, he was posted in the Indian High Commission in London, UK as a Minister. Other than this, Doval was India’s main negotiator with the hijackers of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in Kandahar in 1999. Uniquely, Doval has the experience of being involved in the termination of all 15 hijackings of Indian Airlines aircrafts from 1971-1999.
In the Headquarters, he headed IB’s operations wing for over a decade and was founder Chairman of the Multi Agency Centre (MAC) and Joint Task Force on Intelligence (JTFI). After all the great work, He retired from service on January 31, 2005 from the position of Director, Intelligence Bureau.
During Operation Black Thunder, Doval was inside the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar. He masqueraded as a Pakistani agent and met the Khalistani militants. He is said to be the man behind the success of Operation Black Thunder and the rescue of Romanian diplomat Liviu Radu who was kidnapped by Sikh militants.
He was posted in the Indian High Commission in London,UK as a Minister.
He is a strong advocate of centralised organisation to counter terrorism and to push for a National Counter Terrorism Centre and a POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act) like legislation.
He is held in high esteem as one of India’s well-known foremost analysts & commentators on strategic national and international issues. His writings have been published widely in International journals, domestic and international media, and he is known for its clear insight and vision for Indian and global security issues. Besides writing editorial pieces for several leading newspapers and journals, he has delivered lectures on India’s security challenges and foreign policy objectives at several renowned government and non-governmental institutions, security think-tanks in India and abroad.
In recent years, he has delivered guest lectures on strategic issues at
- IISS, London
- Capitol Hill, Washington D.C
- Australia-India Institute, University of Melbourne
- National Defence College, New Delhi
- Lal Bahadur Shastri of Administration, Mussoorie.
Doval has also spoken internationally at esteemed events globally, citing the ever increasing need of cooperation between the major established and emerging powers of the world.
The long wait for Doval between 2005 and 2014 was spent mostly in setting up the Vivekananda International Foundation, a Delhi based think tank with a centre right intellectual perspective.