The Indian government is finalising  the appointment of  Vikram Doraiswami as the next Indian High Commissioner to Dhaka, MEA sources told Eastetnlink.

Doraiswami, a 1992 batch IFS officer, is currently the Additional Secretary In-charge of International Organisations and Summits at the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) .
Previously, he headed the ministry’s Bangladesh and Myanmar affairs desk and also the new Indo-Pacific  desk   the creation of which ruffled feathers in China.

He also served as the Indian ambassador to South Korea.

The new envoy will replace Riva Ganguly Das, the 1986 batch IFS officer, who is likely to take over as Secretary East at the external affairs ministry when the incumbent Vijai Thakur Singh retires in September.

Das , who headed the Indian Council of Cultural Affairs before she took charge in Dhaka , is known as a soft power exponent , better at home with Gayikas (singers) and Nayikas (actors) .

But India’s steady loss of turf in Bangladesh in recent months and growing Chinese, even Pakistani influence in the Hasina government  mainly due to the ascendancy of a pro-Pakistani adviser, has alarmed Delhi.

Last week, when the Indian foreign policy establishment was busy handling the aftermath of the face-off with China on the northern frontier, a meeting took place in Dhaka, which sources in both Delhi and the Bangladesh capital think has the potential to change the status quo across India’s eastern border.

Such a meeting would be treated as routine but not when the two countries involved are Pakistan and Bangladesh. The wounds of 1971 and its lead-up are still raw and the two have shared frosty ties since the erstwhile East Pakistan broke away and became an independent nation following a nine-month war in which India stood by the freedom fighters.

“Earlier, Pakistani envoys could meet our senior officers only on a few occasions, where they were summoned to express the country’s displeasure with some development,” recounted a senior journalist.

The Bangladesh foreign ministry did not issue any statement about the meeting. The Pakistan high commissioner shared a photograph on Twitter and told a Turkish news agency that he expected further improvement in bilateral relations between the two countries.