Ronen Sen

Washington, Jan. 28: Political appointees are making way for civil servants at key Indian diplomatic missions abroad with only slightly more than a year to go before the general elections.

Washington will shortly join Moscow and London, where political appointees of the UPA government have ended their tenures as heads of missions.

In New York, too, retired diplomat Nirupam Sen is expected to be replaced on April 1 by a serving officer of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS).

A search is on in the Prime Minister’s Office for a replacement for Ronen Sen, whose term as ambassador in Washington expires on March 31. Sen has already been on extension since his two-year contract as a political appointee expired in late summer in 2006.

The Manmohan Singh government had recalled him from retirement soon after it came to power and sent him to Washington as a political appointee.

The UPA had also similarly sent retired foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal and UN secretary-general’s representative in Timor-Leste, Kamalesh Sharma, as ambassador to Moscow and high commissioner to London respectively.

Like Sen, they were on extension. Sibal has already made way in Moscow for a serving IFS officer, Prabhat Shukla.

Sharma, who has been elected secretary-general of the Commonwealth, is in the process of being replaced by a serving officer, Shiv Shankar Mukherjee, now ambassador in Kathmandu.

For several months now, Sen has not been accepting speaking engagements or other commitments here beyond the last week of March.

He has also been preparing the embassy staff here for a change, telling them that he would not accept another extension at the mission here.

Sen was reluctant to accept his second extension when it came early last year for personal reasons, but was persuaded by the Prime Minister and national security adviser M.K. Narayanan to stay on.

It is understood that Mukherjee is the only serving officer on whom there is agreement at the top in Delhi as a successor to Sen in Washington.

But it may be awkward for the Centre to change his posting only weeks after New Delhi received the agreement — clearance, in diplomatic parlance — to his nomination from the Court of St James.

Political appointees are usually reluctant to take up diplomatic jobs towards the end of a government’s tenure in case they have to leave if there is a change in New Delhi after a general election.

In the current political scenario in New Delhi, speculation about early polls has added to such reluctance.

However, a retired foreign secretary may be persuaded to succeed Sen. It will then be up to the appointee to meet opposition leaders and seek their support.