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Jitender Pal Singh is India’s new envoy to Israel

Jan 24, 2025 09:35 PM IST

Jitender Pal Singh also headed the crucial Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran division in the external affairs ministry since 2020

NEW DELHI: Diplomat Jitender Pal Singh, currently posted in the external affairs minister’s office, was on Friday named India’s new envoy to Israel.

JP Singh, an officer of the 2002 batch of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), has served in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey. (Photo courtesy: vifindia.org)
JP Singh, an officer of the 2002 batch of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), has served in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey. (Photo courtesy: vifindia.org)

Singh, who also headed the crucial Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran division in the external affairs ministry since 2020, is expected to take up the new assignment shortly, an official statement said.

The position of envoy to Tel Aviv is one of the most important diplomatic assignments in West Asia, given India’s growing strategic and technology ties with Israel, which is home to more than 32,000 Indian nationals. Singh will take up the post at a time when Israel and Hamas have agreed on a ceasefire to end 15 months of fighting triggered by the terror attacks of October 7, 2023.

Singh, an officer of the 2002 batch of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), has served in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey. He was India’s deputy high commissioner to Pakistan during 2014-2019, and was posted in Kabul during 2008-2012 when the Indian embassy was targeted in two terror attacks.

Besides playing a role in Track 1.5 engagements with the Pakistani side in recent years, Singh was the external affairs ministry’s pointperson for dealing with the Afghan Taliban regime in Kabul since the fall of the Ashraf Ghani government in 2021. Singh’s meetings with Taliban leaders paved the way for foreign secretary Vikram Misri’s meeting with the Taliban’s acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai earlier this month.

The external affairs ministry also announced on Friday that Namrata S Kumar, an officer of the 1997 batch of the IFS and currently the ambassador to Slovenia, will be the next envoy to Latvia. She too is expected to take up her assignment shortly.

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