New Delhi, July 12 :     The first head has rolled for the Kargil intelligence fiasco. Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) chief Arvind Dave, who served on extension for 15 months, was today finally removed by the Centre. Dave will be replaced by former Intelligence Bureau (IB) special director A.S. Dulat. Last night, Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee signed the order appointing him the new RAW chief. Dulat, a 1965 batch IPS officer, received the order today and will take charge from August 1. Dave was to step down on July 31, the day his three-month extension ? the second one ?- was to expire. Bureaucratic circles feel the government ?acted swiftly? in ?punishing? him as head of the agency that failed to detect the Kargil intrusions. Dave was earlier given a one-year extension which expired on April 30. It is strange that the caretaker government has gone ahead and made a fresh appointment. Earlier, while granting Dave the three-month extension, it had argued that as caretaker, it could not appoint a full-time chief. The Centre has also shunted out Dave?s immediate subordinate. Its point is to establish that several senior officials had bungled by failing to supply intelligence on the intrusions. Special secretary N. Nagarajan has been appointed chairman of the Banking Service Recruitment Board. His transfer into an organisation which is not involved in security matters is indication of how peeved the Prime Minister?s Office has been with Nagarajan. The sudden end to Dave?s tenure caps a string of intelligence failures over the past year-and-a-half. RAW had no inkling of the days Pakistan was to conduct its nuclear tests. It was in the dark about Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif?s plans to sack the then army chief, Jehangir Karamat. The agency had no clue that Sharif would introduce the Shariat Bill to further Zia-ul-Haq?s ?Islamisation? process. RAW?s latest goof-up was in failing to penetrate the Pakistan military establishment and collect information on the plan to invade Kargil. Then it failed to inform the PMO whether the Indian MiG-27 had been shot down in Pakistani territory when Operation Vijay was in its early stages. ?All the bravado displayed by the agency in handing over to the political masters the intercepts of two phone conversations between Pakistan army chief Pervez Musharraf and his chief of general staff Lt Gen. Mohammad Aziz did not pay off after all,? a top official said. The PMO was also annoyed with Dave?s style of functioning and the way he treated Dulat. The IB special director, brought over to RAW as special secretary in April to take over from Dave in May, had to function from the agency?s Lodhi Road headquarters without a room. Though Dulat is a counter-intelligence specialist and an expert on Jammu and Kashmir, he was hardly consulted. No files were sent to him after the Pakistan intrusions were detected.