New Delhi, May 21: Dr. Ajay Kumar, an Indian Foreign Service officer from the 2002 batch, has been appointed as the next High Commissioner of India to the Republic of Uganda. Additionally, Dr. Pradeep Singh Rajpurohit, a 2004 batch IFS officer, has been designated as the next Ambassador of India to the Kingdom of Bahrain.
Dr. Ajay Kumar holds a PhD in Agricultural Science from the prestigious Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in New Delhi. He is multilingual, fluent in Hindi, English, Urdu, and Arabic.
Prior to this appointment, Dr. Kumar served as the Minister (Commerce) at the Indian Embassy in the United States from 2023 until this announcement. He was responsible for managing India-U.S. trade and business relations.
This marks Dr. Kumar’s second tenure in Washington. He previously worked there as First Secretary/Counselor from 2013 to 2016. Between 2016 and 2020, he served as Counselor in Nepal, where he led major reconstruction projects following the earthquake. He later became the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu. His earlier diplomatic experience includes assignments in Cairo, Egypt, and Khartoum, Sudan, from 2004 to 2010.
From 2020 to 2023, Dr. Kumar worked as Joint Secretary and Chief of Protocol in the Indian Parliament, managing high-level inter-parliamentary cooperation and foreign delegations. He also served as Director for Economic and Trade Affairs within the SAARC framework and represented India in specialized international committees from 2016 to 2017.
Dr. Pradeep Singh Rajpurohit is currently serving as India’s High Commissioner to the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. He is a medical graduate (MBBS) from Dr. S. N. Medical College in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. He completed his primary education in a Hindi medium school in his village, Peelwa, in Jodhpur district. Before entering diplomacy, he worked for two years in the health sector at Primary Health Centers in Barmer district, Rajasthan.
Rajpurohit has managed relations with 15 countries as High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago (with concurrent accreditation) and as former Joint Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs for the Middle East (WAN). He served as Ambassador to Iraq from 2017 to 2019 and as Deputy Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2019 to 2020. He has also held responsibilities as India’s High Commissioner in Spain.
His diplomatic roles have included various positions in Berlin from 2014 to 2017, Abu Dhabi from 2008 to 2011, and Cairo from 2006 to 2008.
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