The Jammu and Kashmir Government today appointed Braj Raj Sharma as the state’s Chief Secretary.
Sharma succeeded Mohammad Iqbal Khanday, who opted for voluntary retirement last month.
Sharma is a 1984 batch IAS officer of the J&K cadre. He was currently serving as the Principal Secretary in Planning and Development Department. He assumed the office of the Chief Secretary within hours of his appointment.
The newly appointed Chief Secretary said the rehabilitation of the last year’s flood victims would remain his priority. “I will be tackling the situation arising out of the last year’s flood. That is the government’s priority and that will be my priority,” said Sharma.
The state was hit by a devastating floods last year.
The Chief Secretary said he would try to “utilise and leverage” the available resources to the possible extent. “At the same time, (I will) keep proceeding with the Centre to ensure that whatever we have presented gets flown to the state government at the earliest so that people can be helped,” Sharma said.
He said his endeavour as the Chief Secretary would be to “converge all resources made available to us over a period of time and ensure that we are prepared for the next time”.
“We need to be answerable to the public and make sure their problems are taken care of. That is the focus area,” he said. After cracking the IAS exam in 1984, Sharma was first appointed as the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Vaishno Devi Shrine Board in 1986. During the 1996 Assembly and the parliamentary elections, he served as the Deputy Commissioner of Kupwara.
He was appointed as the Director of the Branch Secretariat of the Atomic Energy Directorate at New Delhi, when India became a nuclear power. In 2003, he left for Australia to pursue MBA and returned to the state in 2004 and was appointed the Jammu Divisional Commissioner.
In 2006, Sharma assumed charge of the Chief Electoral Office and was tasked with overseeing the Assembly elections of 2008.
