Institutional study · 29 Jan 2015 – 28 Jan 2018
Foreign Secretary, 2015–2018
A study of an office and a tenure. This page separates what the Ministry of External Affairs did as an institution from what the record documents about the Foreign Secretary's own role.
What the post of Foreign Secretary involves, and what the Government of India did during the tenure.
Actions, statements or signatures that official records attribute to the Foreign Secretary himself.
Office
The office
The Foreign Secretary is the senior-most official of the Ministry of External Affairs. The post is held by a career officer of the Indian Foreign Service. The Ministry is headed by the Minister of External Affairs, who is assisted by one or more Ministers of State.1
The Ministry's official hierarchy runs through six stages: Under Secretary, Deputy Secretary, Director, Joint Secretary, Additional Secretary and Secretary. Its work is divided between territorial divisions, which handle bilateral relations, and functional divisions, which cover areas such as policy planning, multilateral organisations, legal affairs, disarmament, protocol and consular work.1
The Ministry is the cadre-controlling authority for the Indian Foreign Service. It states that the service has about 1,225 officers serving in more than 200 Indian missions and posts abroad and in the Ministry at home.1
Simplified diagram based on the Ministry's own description. The Ministry publishes its current organogram.
Tenure
The tenure
Dr. S. Jaishankar became Foreign Secretary on 29 January 2015. He came to the post directly from Washington, where he had been Ambassador to the United States. His two-year term was extended by one year in January 2017, and he left office on 28 January 2018, when Vijay Gokhale took over.3,4
The table below lists developments during those three years that the Ministry's own records document. For each one it shows two columns: what the Government of India did as an institution, and anything the record attributes to the Foreign Secretary personally. Where no personal role is documented, the table says so.
| Date | Office · Government of India | Documented personal role | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 Jun 2015 | Instruments of ratification of the 1974 India–Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement and its 2011 Protocol exchanged in Dhaka, during the Prime Minister's visit. | Not documented in the cited record. | MEA — Documents of the Dhaka visit |
| 20 Jul 2015 | — | Delivered the IISS Fullerton Lecture in Singapore as Foreign Secretary. | MEA — Speech text |
| Jun 2016 | India joined the Missile Technology Control Regime. | Not documented in the cited record. | MEA — Press release |
| 8 Jun 2017 | India became a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation at the Astana Summit. | Not documented in the cited record. | MEA — Brief on India–SCO cooperation |
| 11 Jul 2017 | — | Speech in Singapore marking 25 years of the India–Singapore partnership. | MEA — Speech text |
| 28 Aug 2017 | MEA press statement on the Doklam disengagement understanding. | Not documented in the cited record. | MEA — Press statement |
| Nov 2017 | India, Australia, Japan and the US held officials-level consultations in Manila on the margins of the East Asia Summit, after a gap of ten years. | Not documented in the cited record. The meeting was held at officials' level. | MEA — Quad brief (July 2026) |
| 8 Dec 2017 | India joined the Wassenaar Arrangement as its 42nd Participating State. | Not documented in the cited record. | MEA — Press release |
| 19 Jan 2018 | India joined the Australia Group as its 43rd participant. | Not documented in the cited record. | MEA — Press release |
Read further
Speeches from the tenure
The Ministry archives texts of speeches delivered as Foreign Secretary, including the 2015 IISS Fullerton Lecture and the 2017 Singapore address listed above.